


The Windrider Cycle

by emblazonet



Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Abusive Parents, Action/Adventure, Adventure, Bards, Bronze Age Valdemar, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Coming of Age, Eventual Romance, Gen, Iron Age Valdemar, Mages, Mostly Canon Compliant, Multi, Reverse Songfic, Trans Male Character, Valdemaran History, War, canon-typical abuse, magic headcanons, minor Transphobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:14:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 27,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24081913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emblazonet/pseuds/emblazonet
Summary: Early in Valdemar's history, the enemy that the Bards call 'Darklord' fought Valdemar's Heir, Windrider, and chained him in a grim dungeon. Moved by pity, two cursed lovers sacrifice all they have to rescue Windrider. But the battle is hardly won, for Darklord has overtaken Haven, and with it, all of Valdemar.This is the tale of Colwyn Windrider and two early Herald-Mages of Valdemar: Rothas Sunsinger and Lythe Shadowdancer.
Relationships: Lythe Shadowdancer/Rothas Sunsinger, Rothas Sunsinger/OMC
Comments: 13
Kudos: 16





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A bunch of this story was sparked by my dissatisfaction with the Sun & Shadow CD, where several songs tell mostly Sunsinger & Shadowdancer's story. I got really irritated by the song that's from Shadowdancer's mother's point-of-view: she sounded like a really selfish person, and that's the kernel from which this whole fic is built. 
> 
> As for Windrider, we barely know anything about him! I wanted to change that too.
> 
> All the credit to [Zahnie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/zahnie) for pointing out this is a reverse songfic :p 
> 
> On Worldbuilding:  
> I'm basing this on my Bronze Age Valdemar 'verse. For the most part I try to be as canon compliant as possible, but there are some areas where I will diverge. Much of canon is, by author admission, inconsistent to begin with. Still, I try to preserve the feel of canon whenever I can, and push canon and interrogate it whenever I disagree with it.

_The Baires/Valdemar Border_  
_87 AF_

The hardest part about the war was not the stench of bloodshed nor the lightning nor the unceasing screaming. For Princess Sunilda, the hardest part was the way she felt each Herald die, as if their spirits all slipped through her own body before fading away to the Havens: her father, King Restil, felled by a black-fletched arrow; Herald Yfandes, crushed beneath her Companion's body; her last brother, Tomin, cut down moments later by a horrible Pelagiris-twisted monster with long claws and a crest of feathers. She felt their deaths blow below her breastbone like a howling wind, and when they had passed, she felt they'd taken her own heart with them.

Then her spear ran through the King of Baires, and all the magical constructs either swayed with sudden weakness or disappeared.

Sunilda dragged in a harsh smoke-clogged breath, filling her lungs. Her Companion, Trevan, trembled beneath her. She bellowed in her best warfield voice, "PRESS ON!"

Archers, mounted and on foot, sent up a new volley; the Companion-led cavalry charged. They fought the Bairean army down the tall slope, hacking as many thornbushes as they did bodies; and those in retreat found the thorns rose up against them, witched by Father's—no, Sunilda's—mages. She felt Trevan's pain as he leapt over the bushes and could not clear them unscathed; his belly ran red, and her hose was torn from her legs. It didn't matter. The Bairan mages were lowly hedge magicians for the most part: only the King had been an Adept, and her spies had said the Crown Prince also had that potential—but the Crown Prince huddled behind a wall of constructs. Sunilda dipped her bronze-tipped spear into the human guards between her and the construct-wall, her spear finding meaty places between the laces of the boiled-leather armour. Other guards crumpled beneath Trevan's lashing hooves.

The constructs melted away at Sunilda's approach.

"We surrender," rasped the Crown Prince of Baires. He was a small boy of about ten, with choppy black hair framing his soft chin and wide cheekbones. His eyes were the brown that was nearly black, and there was an eerie, fiery reflection of war inside them. Sunilda thought of her own little daughter at home, and her heart clenched. That feeling told Sunilda that the dead had actually left her heart in her chest. So she was still alive, with blood spatters burning her with heat, her ears ringing with the cheers of her victorious army.

There was a frail-looking boy cowering before her, but she turned away and let him live.

* * *

_Haven, Valdemar_  
_87 AF_

"Mother?"

Sunilda turned back to the light of the rooms. Colwyn was out of the nursery again, scampering out onto the balcony. Sunilda sighed, watching the lamplight play over the red highlights of her daughter's hair, and walked out of the chill evening air.

"I know you don't like the nursery, and I promise tomorrow we'll find you a proper set of rooms befitting a princess," Sunilda began. "I know twelve is too old-"

Colwyn raised her pointed chin and shook her head vigorously. "No! I mean, thank you Mother, yes, please! But… that's not what I wanted to talk about?"

Sunilda thought of soldiers losing limbs in the midst of battle, of lighting cracking the stone arch of the West Great Gate and sundering it, of Heralds and Companions screaming both by the pain of their death and the pain of their severed bond. Every time she closed her eyes or tried to concentrate on anything but the war with Baires, she saw these images.

_:What is the use of fighting if it isn't to take care of Valdemar's children? Of your own child?_ : asked her Companion Trevan with uncharacteristic sharpness.

The hair on Sunilda's arms stood up. The Companions had begun to talk over the course of the war, but she still wasn't used to it. They spoke rarely now, and they seldom scolded.

She knelt on the stone balcony and opened her arms to Colwyn. "What is it, dearheart?"

"Well," said Colwyn, squirming, "It's being a princess. I don't want to be a princess."

Sunilda blinked. "If you're not Chosen by a Companion, you will not be Heir. If that's not the destiny you want or are suited to—"

"No no no!" cried Colwyn. "I want a Companion! I want a Companion! I want to be a Herald!"

Sunilda smiled wistfully into Colwyn's soft curls. Some days she wished for a simpler, less complex, less sorrowful life. To be queen was a harsh destiny. Better her child should want it than fight the yoke all her days. "Well," she said, "Then what is the trouble?"

Colwyn pressed her lips together, eyes narrowed. Sunilda waited. Colwyn was a thoughtful child, or she had been before Sunilda had ridden off to war. Since the return, Colwyn seemed restless, but still quieter than other littles her age. Finally Colwyn said, with all the stubbornness that characterized Valdemar's line, "I don't want to be a princess. I want to be a prince."

There were several things Colwyn could have said that would have surprised Sunilda more. Like wanting to run off to be a Player. Or wishing to grow wings and fly to the moon. But this…

"You're a girl," said Sunilda, flabbergasted. "You don't need to be a prince. It's the same job!"

"I'm a boy," said Colwyn quickly, then flushed and looked down. "I mean. I feel… it's how I feel."

Sunilda pressed her hand to Colwyn's cheek and made Colwyn look her full in the eye. "Has someone been cruel to you about being a girl? Have they said unpleasant things?"

"No!" cried Colwyn. She shook off Sunilda's hand and wriggled free of the hug. "It's not that, it's just, I'm a boy—I feel like a boy—I don't want to be a girl because it doesn't feel right, why can't you just understand me?"

Sunilda stared at Colwyn. She'd never seen Colwyn so upset. Colwyn was an even-tempered child, who seldom cried except in physical discomfort. "I don't understand. You're right about that," Sunilda said wearily. "You're trying to deny your own body." She'd never heard of anything like it. Of women hating the restrictions of their life, sure. Aunt Yfandes had been given a hard time because she took female lovers. There were many prejudices amongst the Valdemarans and the wildfolk. The Empire her grandfather had fled from had held women in low regard. It was something he had not known how to change. To be a female Herald or mage, or even Queen, was to become, at times, sexless to the populace.

"The body's just not right," said Colwyn mulishly. "I just feel like a boy."

"And sometimes you feel like eating all the cakes at a feast, but that doesn't mean it's good for you," Sunilda snapped.

"How is being a boy bad?" demanded Colwyn. "You're not being fair. You're the Queen! You say what's what! And you're always saying what Great-Grandfather put into law: There's no one, true way."

: _He's got you there_ ,: Trevan said.

: _HE?!_ : Sunilda heaved in a big breath, glowering at her offspring.

: _Why should it matter if Colwyn's a boy or girl?_ :

: _You can't change your sex on a whim!_ : Sunilda snapped.

: _Does Colwyn do anything extreme on a whim?_ :

Sunilda tried to ignore her Companion, but she knew Trevan was right. Colwyn watched her with crossed arms and a set expression just short of a pout. "Fine, " Sunilda said. "We will think about this. You will wait six months before reaching a decision. We will not talk about this. You will continue to be a princess as you were for that time. If this is not a whim, if this is something that you have considered with all the gravity that this is due, then I will listen to you fairly. I will examine the idea myself in the meantime, so that when we speak I am thinking instead of reacting from shock. Does this sound like a compromise you can handle?"

Colwyn bit her—his?—lip and then nodded. "You'll see, it's not a whim!"

Sunilda sighed and thought of the war, and her confused child, and her own perception that men were men and women were women. There were no solutions to anything in life, she thought with the heaviness of relentless fatigue. Only compromises.


	2. Prince Colwyn of Valdemar

_ Haven _  
_ 87-90 AF _

On the occasion of Colwyn's thirteenth birthday, they announced him throughout the castle and the city of Haven as Prince Colwyn Sunildason of Valdemar's line, Heir-Apparent to the Crown of Valdemar. He wore trousers underneath his princely robes, his most comfortable pair of much-washed pale red linen. He smiled brightly at everyone beneath a mop of waving burnished hair.

He'd hoped that day to have a Companion greet him as he left for the city's parade in his honour, and then to look into its eyes and be confirmed heir, but that did not happen.

The city folk cheered for him, or probably more readily for the holiday, and threw apple blossoms at his feet—Colwyn's birthday was in the midst of flowering spring. There were minstrels and bards everywhere, setting the tune, setting folks' feet to fast dancing. It was rather nice, thought Colwyn atop his short bay palfrey, to feel like the whole world was celebrating with you, even if they were strangers. Strangers, but his people.

He spent a lot of the parade jumping off his palfrey to the consternation of the guards. He offered flowering twigs to little children, asked the bakers and millers how they were enjoying the parade, started a mock-fight with some town boys he knew that made all the music stop so people could gape in the garlanded square at them. He got mud on his robes and a scolding from Sunilda, who all but dragged him back onto his palfrey, but it was the best birthday Colwyn had ever had, or would have for many years to come.

He never remembered receiving any presents that year but one: not a person called him  _ princess. _

The year passed and the next blooming spring found him a little taller, leaner, stronger. His shoulders grew broader than he'd hoped for, and his chest hardly grew at all.  _ Please _ , he'd whisper to himself on solitary meanders in the rolling fields given to the Companions, or in the groves about the temple there,  _ let me just look like a boy, too? I know who I am, but sometimes the elder statesmen forget, or the noble children tease me. _ Sometimes he felt odd when he prayed like this—a prayer not to any particular God or Goddess, just, perhaps, praying to the earth itself. His hands would plunge into the ground, digging at the earth. It felt like something stirred, serpentine and sensual, in the ground around him at such times. The grass and trees would take on a blurry haze, as if they pulsed with his own desires. Then he'd feel wobbly and worn, and catch himself holding his breath. He laughed such occasions off, afterwards, as a foolish child wishing so hard that he forgot to breathe and got vertigo for his troubles.

Colwyn's life grew busy after his fourteenth birthday. His tutors—in riding, fighting, statecraft, etiquette, art—gave him harder work. He switched magic tutors, from his old nursemaid to an elderly Adept named Lady Clorista, a wire-thin woman with ashen skin and regal bearing, who made small music when she walked for all of the little charms and jewels she wore. The charms were of bone porcelain mainly, but some were of bronze, or silver, or sometimes thin tin. Clorista did not come to Colwyn, nor walk with him outdoors as his nurse had; instead she held court in the tallest tower of the castle. She taught not only Colwyn, but also Ladies Thiabalda and Colettal and Lord Pavayne, all Colwyn's age.

The four mage-students could have been friends. Colwyn tried right away, but pretty golden-haired Thiabalda had made a subtle barbed joke about Colwyn's gender (a joke he wished he could run to his mother with, but knew he was too old to hide behind her skirts), and Colettal had giggled and firmly attached herself to Thi. Pavayne was a pudgy pale boy, short and fond of nibbling his fingers; he immediately sided with the girls to avoid being the butt of their jokes. Colwyn scorned them all. He would have been happy to be alone, he thought to himself, if only Thi were worse at magic. Unfortunately, she outstripped him in a manner of months.

At least, he consoled himself, a Companion would Choose him soon. Then they'd see!

But a Companion did not Choose him that year, nor the following year.

What did happen, right before Colwyn turned fifteen, was that Sunilda gave birth to a baby girl, whose father was the new consort, Lord Temyrr: a mild-mannered, attractive man that Colwyn hardly knew. Colwyn's father had been lost to the Bairans early in the war, and he hardly remembered him. Sunilda named the girl Selenay, and there was much rejoicing all over the kingdom.

The anger came back that year. Colwyn knew he ought to know better, but the burning leaden weight of it pooled inside him and would not drain. He was shunted to the side as he had been as a child; first sidelined by war, and then, with the war reduced to uneasy truce and border skirmishes, sidelined by his baby sister, a  _ real _ princess. Colwyn knew, instinctively, that Selenay was a girl as he had not been; and that added extra coals to the stove-fire of his anger. He mumbled in his mind—for he had no confidante to speak to—of course Sunilda is busy, of course a mother-queen will not be able to attend her children the way a parent should.

He simmered at his classes, feeling outmatched in every area. The worst was magic: his nurse had said time and again how strong Colwyn's potential was. Yet Thiabalda could create beautiful illusions and stabilize them with power drawn from leylines; and Colwyn couldn't feel any leylines at all. Soon, Clorista said, Thiabalda would take her test for Mastery. Colwyn went away from class that day fuming.

The next day after that sealed Colwyn's hate for Thi.

It was bad enough to see Thi leading her new white palfrey by the Companion's Stable; worse that Thi had seen him before he realized what was happening, and had guessed immediately why he'd pelted out of the palace at a run.

He'd assumed that she had been Chosen, fooled by the white palfrey.

"So courteous of you, to want to congratulate me when you're still waiting on a Companion of your own," said Lady Thi, simpering. Colwyn wanted to punch her dimples off her vapid face.

"Ah, but I forget," she said, putting her finger against her rose-petal lips. "You're not the Heir, just the Heir-Apparent, so maybe the Companions won't Choose you. You're not Valdemar's  _ princess _ , after all." Her eyes dipped down, towards his trousers, scorn in every curve of her.

Colwyn's lips pressed into a thin line. He felt his hands bunch into fists. "You—"

A spry figure bounded out of the Companion's Stable with a much more sedate, older Companion following behind. "Why, if it isn't Lady Thiabalda! I've heard so many things about you these days, in fact word is you're coming along splendidly on your research into the Guild lineages! So remarkable, your scholarly skill at such a young age!"

A disgruntled expression slackened Thi's face for a moment. She turned to face the wiry old woman who was beaming up at her. "Ah—Herald Anita, it's g-good to see you," she said. She curtseyed, spreading out her russet riding skirts in a courtly fashion. "Please forgive me, and you too, Your Highness—I was just meaning to get back to my studies. It's been such a refreshing day for a ride!"

Anita waved cheerfully as Thi scrambled onto her palfrey back, tugged its head up from the tufts of grass it was nosing, and kicked it into a trot in the direction of the city gate.

Colwyn crossed his arms. "What was that about?" he asked Anita.

Anita winked up at him. "I heard she was giving you some trouble. Well, actually, my ears aren't good enough—it was Rolly's ears that heard her." Anita gave her Companion's whiskery nose a vigorous rub, and he snorted at her. "Master Gofreith is waiting on her next report this afternoon. I hear she's been falling behind a bit with her Guild research."

"Let her," said Colwyn grumpily. "She deserves to be taken down a peg.'

Anita tut-tutted and shook both her shaggy grey head and her finger at him. "Lowering others doesn't raise you up, Colwyn. You ought to know that."

"It's not fair!" Colwyn burst out, seeing Thi turn a corner and out of earshot. He hated her stupid white palfrey. It didn't look anything as pretty as a Companion. Even Rolly, worn like a stuffed animal, had a deer-like grace to him that no mere horse could ever match. "Of course there's no way she'd be Chosen, but did she have to make me look the fool? Again?"

"Your courtesy does not make you look like a fool," Anita said, putting a gnarled hand on Colwyn's arm. "You mistook one thing for another, and probably made little Thi feel quite important."

"What does she need to feel important for? She's got everything, and so much magic, and, and, I'm supposed to be Prince, and Heir-Apparent, and the Companions won't even look at me!" Colwyn stamped his foot, like he was twelve again, and felt stupid as soon as he'd done it.

Rolly snorted and headbutted him.

"You're feeling sorry for yourself," Anita said airily, straightening Colwyn up as he staggered from the force of Rolly's bony old head. "You're down about something else. Come, Heir-Apparent Prince Colwyn of Valdemar, walk with an aged old woman. I'm too sore to ride today, and Rolly's too arthritic to bear me."

Somehow, Colwyn suspected neither Herald nor Companion were in rough shape. But since everyone at court was busy  _ ooh-ing _ over his baby sister, or being talented and useful elsewhere, he supposed Anita was feeling sorry for him. Colwyn sighed, then offered his arm gallantly to Anita, who leaned on it just like a truly fragile old lady might.

"There's no reason to worry about being Chosen, Colwyn," Anita said after awhile, as they took the bridge over the Haven River and into Companion's Field. "You're young still. It's better practice to let Heralds mature before they are Chosen, I think. Rolly agrees with me. We've been discussing this since the early days of the Order of Heralds, you know. Opinions differ, and the needs of the times differ."

Colwyn stomped into the muddy grass. "There's been a score of foals this past spring," he said, unable to keep the whine from his voice, and loathing himself for it. "Why can't one of them Choose me?"

Anita stopped. "Colwyn," she said, "They have to grow up a bit, first. There aren't that many Companions to begin with. Don't let patience turn bitter inside you. Let the foals grow. Tend to your skills. Trust that the Gods know when the right time comes for your work to bear fruit."

It was good advice, Colwyn knew it was. But later in the evening all he could think of was Thiabalda's scornful glance at his trousers, the way she viewed him with disgust as if he were something unnatural. The way she couldn't forget that he'd been named a  _ princess _ for twelve years of his life in error, and somehow was disgusted by it. Most people didn't have a problem with it, so what was wrong with Thi?

Colwyn threw an embroidered cushion at the wall, then walked over and stomped on it, pretending it was Thi, prone and pleading for mercy and calling him  _ Prince _ . In his fantasy, she barely knew how to make a cup float an inch, much less reach for the leylines. Then he picked up the pillow and buried his face in it, and exploded into an angry muffled yell that went on until he felt slack and drained of air. He fell over onto his couch and moaned. Despite everything, there  _ was _ bitterness inside him: a heavy pit of it, cooking in the middle of his anger.

How would a Companion ever Choose him now?


	3. Colwyn Attains Mastery

_Haven _  
_ 90 AF _

That winter, Lady Clorista took Colwyn, Pavayne and Colettal (Thiabalda being away with her family) out into the crystallized Companion's Field. The pine trees were glassy, and it was so bright Colwyn had to squint. It was frightfully cold, and Clorista had forbidden her students either cloak or furs. "Now," she said, "create heat for yourself." It was the first time they'd done magic out in the Field.

Colwyn called the heat from the ley-lines.

It was easy.

He thought back to every time he'd struggled, teeth gritted, sweat pooling at his hairline, back in the tower. Reaching, reaching, knowing he  _ could _ , he could  _ sense _ them, feeling the easy flow of Thiabalda's magic beside him, deft as he was clumsy. And now, out in the cold, it was simply expedient: it took energy for Colwyn to warm himself, and his magic reserves would easily tap out if he were to be comfortable for any length of time. But it was all around him, pulsing in every living thing, pouring into a river of power that followed the Haven River's curve in the Field. All he had to do was open himself to the wild of it, and invite it in.

Pavayne and Colettal expended their magic earlier, Colettal burning through her magic reserves, Pavayne having a lighter touch. They were shivering within a quarter mark, seated cross-legged around Lady Clorista. Clorista was serene, and the snow and ice around her steamed. She looked at Colwyn. Colwyn, too, was seated in a ring of small steam, and his bottom felt soggier with each passing moment.

"I see," said Lady Clorista. "You will take the test for Mastery in a week's time, Colwyn."

Colwyn was filled to bursting. He told his mother straight away, and the lords of her council since he'd broken into a meeting by accident—they weren't too cross with him, however, since they had been about to adjourn. He told Herald Anita, who he found in the cramped library some marks later. And in the evening he told his horse, Bell, the short bay he was quickly outgrowing. Then he realized, patting Bell's nose, that he really didn't have any other friends to tell. His city friends were mostly apprenticed now, and he seldom saw them, and he hadn't really tried making friendships with nobles, not after the mage students.

"Blast that," he muttered into Bell's mane. "I'm just going to have to be the most powerful Master Mage in all Valdemar, and after that, an Adept. You don't need friends if you're a powerful mage. Then you can, I don't know, summon up friends to talk to." Of course, he added silently to himself, that's exactly what magic was for. Summoning imps from the Abyssal Planes for tea.

Maybe one of the two dozen Companion foals would Choose him, he reminded himself. They were still leggy and growing. More of the Companion mares were pregnant. There weren't any adult Companions who hadn't Chosen yet. Colwyn could wait.

The next day excitement turned to dread. What if he failed? The Mastery test did not take place outdoors, where it was easier to sense the ley-lines. And what spells did he know, really? He spent hours cooped up in the small library, drawing out diagrams on both a wax and a chalk tablet (which was cheaper by far than wasting precious parchment or paper). Only when he was certain of things did he carefully use pen and ink in his own carefully-tended spellbook.

He also read furiously, though this was largely procrastination.

There were spellbooks penned by mages from the Eastern Empire, where Great-Grandfather Valdemar had escaped from, written in coloured inks on fine vellum and bound in soft leather; there were cruder spellbooks from the Founding of Valdemar, one of which detailed the creation of the Great Gates that allowed Valdemar's people to spread out and settle so vigorously in the wild wilderness they'd found themselves, squeezed in by the Pelagaris and its horrors. Of the Pelagiris there were more scrolls and leather folios of notes. Colwyn even found a section of breed registries for horses and dogs and hawks. That section was beside a little lectern, upon which was chained the branching family tree of Companions. At the very beginning of  _ that _ was a picture of the temple in Companion's Field, inked and painted with care. There was silver leaf on the horse heads, and below each stylized head read the names of Companions.

More and more had been foaled each year. Half the Companion's Tree was of Companions born within Colwyn's lifetime. Many foals had been born since his mother had defeated Baires.

And so many had died in the war. What if the Companion meant for Colwyn had made the Choice to take on another Herald who was needed for the emergency? What if life were just unfair that way?

He did not practice any spells in the library. He went out into the field and opened himself to the ley-lines. Then he went back to the castle. At first when he tried this, his connection ended as soon as he entered the castle. Quickly he learned a new way to think about buildings. There was no  _ in _ and  _ out _ . This fundamental separation had built walls in Colwyn's mind from a young age. Inside did not mean he was no longer in the world, he reminded himself. He did not leave this plane for another when he walked through a door;.It was not a Gate. This division in his mind had been why ley-line magic was so much easier outdoors, and nearly impossible when he was in Lady Clorista's tower.

He came to this realization a day before his test, and just in time.

The first half of the test was a written component, a thing of charts and diagrams. He took it in Clorista's workroom early in the morning, and the fire was barely above embers. A storm was pressing in on Haven, making the air close and electric. The shutters rattled in a heavy moaning wind. The sounds would have soothed Colwyn, who loved to hear the wind, if he hadn't been nervous and shivering from cold.

"This test has a deep history," said Lady Clorista before he began. She was grand in ochre-toned silk embroidered and festooned; Colwyn wore a simple green robe belted at the waist. "King Valdemar was a member of the Four Facets School of magery in the Eastern Empire, as were my parents before me, and we have built Valdemaran magic out of the foundations of that school. Members of this school were persecuted across the Empire, driven out from their monastery-school by the sea. Valdemar could not rescue all of them; it formed the core of the Mages' Guild we once had, and now it underpins the Order of Heralds. But we have tried to uphold the values of this school, the facets of wisdom:  _ honesty _ in what works we craft,  _ fellowship _ amongst mages, to strive in the pursuit of  _ knowledge _ , and to, as much as possible, act with  _ compassion _ towards the world. Do you, Colwyn Sunildason of Valdemar's Lineage, reaffirm your oath to the Four Facets, and to Valdemar as a whole?"

"I do," Colwyn said, hoarse with cold and nerves.

Clorista lay a sheaf of parchment before him. "You may begin," she said.

All that work in the library, and all his time studying before that, brought fruit now. His pen danced excitedly over the page, weaving loops and lines out of other shapes made straight with rulers. This was easy stuff, it was just theory. There were diagrams of the flow of magic; there were questions on building shields, on channelling, on how the planes were said to intersect. The winds howled, the pen scratched, the fire gradually grew, and Colwyn felt very smart and confident when he handed the sheaf of paper to Clorista.

After all, if mean-spirited Thiabalda could do it, so could Colwyn!

For the second half of the test, they went to the Work Room that King Valdemar and his Adept circle had created when they first built the castle. Colwyn felt its heavy shields as soon as he walked through the door. He could not longer hear the storm groan around the castle corners. There was no sounds of conversation or chattering. There was only this small box of a room, empty of any furniture. The heavy air smelled of age, of enchantments that were, perhaps, older than the room itself. Of magic that predated Valdemar's founding, the faintest ozone smell of artifacts taken from their old home in the Empire.

But it was time to move beyond history. Clorista handed him chalk and said, "First you will summon four elementals for each basic element. Greet them, and dismiss them. Follow the protocols I have taught you. Then you will inscribe the Summoning of the Bronze Bell, and summon a minor Ethereal denizen. What you summon is up to you. Begin."

There were so many steps Lady Clorista had omitted. This was the real test: any of the things she'd asked was easy, but she was looking for all the things in between. Specifically, the appropriate ways to set up, and which precautions to take.

Colwyn settled himself cross-legged in the centre of the room. He closed his eyes. The stone beneath his butt was steady. It lifted to him. His power sought a path downwards. Ground into the earth, and then to centre himself, so that he was his magic and his magic was his core, and he was unmovable so long as he sat here.

He did not open his eyes to see the shimmering line of his defenses. He wasn't, in fact, sure if Lady Clorista would be able to see it, or if that shimmering were a thing he only "saw" with his mind and would be invisible to his physical eyes. He felt warm, calm, safe. Nothing could harm him here, in this room built by his great-grandfather.

The first elemental he summoned was almost too easy. He called up the eager, curious  _ vrondi _ who loved to come to the Heralds to help them with their truth spells. The little clouds clustered around him, chirping inquisitively.

_ :??: _

: _ Hello: _ Colwyn said. He tossed them a line of his magic.

: _!! _ : They took it and, presumably, fed. He dismissed them, and they went, almost purring their pleasure at the treat.

That was another test, too: could he siphon off  _ just _ the right amount of magic for each elemental, without draining himself? It took power to reach the ley-lines, and it was ley-line magic he needed for the Ethereal summoning.

Next came the  _ uline _ of the water. It was harder to call these, because while air was everywhere, he had to conjure first the feeling of water in his mind—in this dry and dusty room—and call them with that imagining from their plane. But they came, giggling and burbling, greenish transparent eels with iridescent scales, and fed on his magic and were gone again.

Earth and fire were a bit harder. The  _ khamsin _ were lordly earth lizards, and they very gravely reached their claws out to pluck magical tidbits from Colwyn. They came reluctantly, and they measured Colwyn with slitted eyes, and one by one nodded minimum approval.

The  _ sandaar _ were the most dangerous to handle. If firebirds imagined themselves without substance, they would be  _ sandaar _ , fast and sharp and hazy to Colwyn's mind. They nipped at his magic, and he felt hot and burned, and he bit hard on his lip to keep from crying out.

Then they too were gone, and the first stage of the practical test was over.

Colwyn sighed and gripped the chalk. He inscribed the Ethereal summoning over most of the floor of the room, and while he did so he tried to imagine himself outside. He knew that there were several ley-lines all around, because there was a node underneath Haven. Directly beneath the castle, in fact. The friendly Haven River's ley-line was actually not the nearest to him now, and probably not the one he wanted to tap into.

_ Inside is out, they are one and the same, _ Colwyn reminded himself. The biggest challenge was the mental hurdle. But he'd called the elements of air, water, earth and fire to himself, hadn't he? Surely his imagination was strong enough to overcome this block. But the elementals lived on different planes, and the ley-lines were part of the natural world.

He took in a deep breath. He stood at the centre of the chalked circle. Ground. Centre. Raise the shields.

Then there was nothing for it. He searched for a ley-line, and found several, and he prayed to every god he knew the name of, and opened himself to the flow.

Power flowed through him, sleek and wonderful. He was awake, and alive, and he wanted to dance! He wanted to run and kick up his heels and laugh from vivacity!

Instead he moved his hands and his fingers through a complicated series of gestures and intoned the words of the spell. The shape around him began to glow faintly. It directed his magic into the Ethereal plane, which felt like an everlasting spring, eternal; crisp air, and the heady scent of lilacs.

He felt a tremour of hooves. He opened his eyes. He wasn't standing in a workroom; instead he stood in a wooded glade, curtained by willow trees. The sky was weird, too green, the sun was wrong—he couldn't look at it. Instead he looked towards the sound of hooves.

At first he thought it was a Companion. He thought a Companion was coming to Choose him, and his heart lifted with joy and delight—but the hooved creature that trotted into the glade wasn't a Companion at all.

It bore a resemblance to a white horse, superficially. It had a long mane and tail that tossed about on the faint breeze as if that breeze were a big gust. But the creature was light-boned and thin as horses are not, and folded on its back were a pair of feathery wings. It looked to a Companion what a Companion looked to a regular horse, Colwyn thought, his jaw gaping.

He reached out for it. "I'm doing a Mastery test, as a mage," he told it aloud. His voice was small and shivery upon the Ethereal Plane. He could see by its clear turquoise eyes that the creature was intelligent. "I was told to summon a creature."

The winged not-horse tilted its head to the side. It mindspoke, : _ You are not then ready for me. _ : It was a masculine voice, not terribly deep, and somehow breathy.

"I'm sorry," said Colwyn, feeling he had disappointed the beast.

: _ That is no matter, because you are here now. _ : said the being. : _ You have the Adept-potential, as your people term it. You could, if you wish, bypass this test entirely.: _ It shook its mane, making it toss about even wilder. : _ No, I see that this goes against your honour. You have a certain amount of patience, for a young human. It has been long since I knew humans. Very well. Will you enter into a bond with me, mage boy? _ :

"I—I thought I was just going to summon something from the Ethereal Plane," Colwyn said, confused. "My teacher said nothing about entering into a bargain."

: _ Not a bargain!: _ the winged horse lashed its tail, mantled its wings. : _ Not a bargain, a bond. A willing bond. You are promised to many things already, some not yet to come; but another bond will serve you well, and I am lonely here. I outlived my purpose long ago. I can help you, when you have the power to summon me. I can help your people. _ Valdemar. _ : _

"And what if this is a trick?" asked Colwyn. "What's the terms?"

: _ No terms. No trick to this. This is a pledge. That you will call me when you are Adept; and I pledge to help you. You will give me purpose in exchange for aid. I promise on the names of the gods you called on—Astera of the Stars, the Sun-Lord Vkandis—that I mean you no harm.: _

"How shall I call you?" Colwyn asked. His whole body thrummed with resonance; this being was his suddenly, importantly, and he knew abruptly he must say yes, or forever regret it.

The winged horse danced to him, wings outstretched. Those wings were long. They wrapped around in front of Colwyn, enveloping him. : _ By my secret name,: _ the horse said. He inscribed that name deep in Colwyn's mind.

The winged horse shook its wings. A white feather fell onto Colwyn's hands. That feather was as long as a forearm.

The Ethereal Plane dissolved abruptly.

"Wait!" cried Colwyn, but he was reaching out to a blank wall, and his diagram had ceased to glow.

He bit his lip again, concentrating carefully. He ground all his excess power back into the earth, draining his shields. The spell was safely ended. There was a long white feather in his hand that looked like it came from no mortal creature, and it wasn't glowing either. He had no summoning to show Clorista, not in any traditional sense.

Had he failed?

Clorista tapped her foot against the stone, arms crossed and mouth twisted to the side. "I said to summon a being  _ from _ the Ethereal Plane, not travel there yourself, Colwyn."

"I did the spell correctly!"

"You didn't," said Clorista. She pointed at the foundation-shape in the diagram, a pentacle with certain circles placed within it. "You accidentally created a two-way summoning. But… you shouldn't have been able to, even if you  _ had _ put the circles in the wrong points of the pentacle, because there's a trick to moving planes that you shouldn't have been able to do. But you did it, and you clearly spoke to something, and it gave you that feather."

She paused. Her dry tone had seemed neither impressed or angry. Colwyn leaned so far forward he nearly stumbled, he was that anxious to hear whether he'd passed or failed.

Clorista sighed. "Welcome, Colwyn, to the responsibilities of a Master mage. I trust you'll learn how to fix your mistake when I test you again next week. But for this test—yes, you have more than passed. Your control is superb. You are a Master now."

And then she very patiently waited out his whoops of glee, which Colwyn appreciated deeply, because he couldn't have stopped himself even if he tried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to piece through a coherent magic system from the Velgarth canon is surprisingly tricky. I based some of the Four Facets school/the Mastery test off of Kethry's White Winds school. Much of it, too, is based on the magic we know Vanyel performs (namely, a lot of summoning! Vrondi, demons, etc) and of course, emphasizing the ground-and-centre that we see in the Arrows and Mage Winds books. The earth and water elementals were never described; I took the name 'khamsin' from Rethwellan lizards that are mentioned in the Oath books, and 'uline' is, of course, a play on 'undine.'
> 
> We also know next to nothing about the Ethereal plane, except that it exists, and some of the beings are tricksters. I do hope to preserve the canonical feel as I expand on and craft my own versions of Velgarth's magic.


	4. Interlude - Darklord of Baires

_Qorthes, Baires_   
_92 AF_

Though he saw his own father slain before him, the boy was granted life. The ground around him, rutted and sodden and strewn with corpses. The sky swarmed with mage-meddled storms, purple clouds like bruises, veined in lightning. The white bitch-queen struck down his protectors, cut to the very heart of him, and Nemeth Mavelan looked into the eyes of his enemy and hated the pity he saw there.

There was a saying in Baires, that every gift has with it a curse; that the double-headed serpent will always bite twice. It was sometimes a peasant's saying, Nemeth's father had told him: because the standard of Baires bore the double-headed dragon, and sometimes an overlord must be cruel to be just.

Nemeth rode to war a boy, and saw how easily the flower of manhood was cut down; so he came back knowing it was his boyhood that protected him, and must ever bear the guilt of never being enough to have saved his father or his knights. And, he feared, never growing strong enough to surpass his father's power—who could? his father had been gifted his magic by the Mage-Storms that had changed the land—so that he might avenge him.

But that was no matter. It was five years to the day that the bitch-queen Sunilda had killed his father. Nemeth had vowed, in his own blood spilt willingly over that sad husk of his father's body, that he would kill the bitch-queen, take Valdemar, and make the Bairan wyrm fat with wealth. He had long prepared this army, seeking sorcerers, hedge-wizards, even Changecreatures wrestled or bribed from the Pelagiris. All to combat the demon-horses and their riders.

For long months his skirmishing units had harried the Valdemaran border. He had nibbled at them, nipping away their safety, their ease. Their people. He had tried to target the demon-horses when he could. His spies told him the horses were breeding in a profusion never before seen; but that was no matter. The foals would still be young and weak when he took Valdemar. It would be easy, then, to crush them like white larvae.

In his father's tall tower, in his study, Nemeth melted the wax carefully in its little pot. Flecks of mica shimmered in the deep crimson wax. He rolled up the scroll while the wax was melting, and then poured a dollop over the rolled edge. He buried his signet ring deep in red ooze; for a moment he wished he were crushing Sunilda's heart beneath his hand. The seal glittered when he removed his ring; the double-headed dragon reared there, looking to west and east, tongues flickering. He tied a thick ribbon around the scroll—and for a moment, he took a deep pleasure in the silken ribbon, in the dexterity of his hands. He loved the feel of soft fabrics, soft vellum, the scratch of a pen, to know his hands were skilled.

In another life, he thought dreamily, distracted from his war-plans, his father was alive. Nemeth would be apprenticed to a scholar, perhaps, not a prince but an _advisor_ , respected but given such freedom to _make._ He would make books that nobles would beggar their coffers for, rare, precious, knowledge-filled _books_.

The floorboards creaked. Nemeth looked up and sighed. He beckoned the courier-girl closer. It was her shuffling feet that had made the floor creak, that had broken into his fancy. She was a small, pretty girl with big brown eyes and dark skin, about the age Nemeth had been the year Valdemar had defeated Baires. He gently handed her the scroll.

"Take this to Queen Sunilda of Valdemar. You have my seal; bring the standard with my arms, and make sure to bring the white flag so they do not strike you down. Come back to me safely."

Her small hands closed tight around the scroll. She bowed deeply. "Yes, my king." And she turned away smartly, with military-trained ease.

She took with her Baires's formal declaration of war.

It was time.


	5. Sing Only to the Sun

Several Years Earlier...

_Dalsfield, Lineas _  
_83 AF_

  
There were new women in Dalsfield. They filed into the village tavern, dressed in long cloaks stained with mud at the hems. They had the look of itinerant tinkers, one of the few trades young women were encouraged to have, if they were not heading a household.

Rothas Sunsinger noticed them, and his heart clenched with a sense of their impropriety, but his song did not falter. It was a hunting song, a warning song, of a white stag who turned into an ancient wizard. The wizard cursed the hunter to be a stag in turn, and set the hunter's hounds upon him. It was a relentless song, a chasing song, and Aren his friend beat a steady throbbing accompaniment beside him on a drum.

Women did not hunt. It wasn't right for them to come in here, into a man's tavern, and listen to a hunting song. Women had their own gathering places. It annoyed Rothas immensely to see them, though in truth there was no taboo and the tavern's owner would serve anyone of any gender. Rothas knew it was just how  _ he _ felt. He ground his teeth at the end of his performance, after he'd waved to the fawning applause.

At the table farthest away from the newcomers, Rothas's friends wouldn't shut up about the women. They were young and pretty, that was agreed upon, and unmarried. Could any of the young men afford a groom-price for a talented tinker-woman?

"You think they're pretty because they don't look like a sister or a cousin," Rothas pointed out as the serving boy came round with a worn earthenware jug filled to the brim with the local brew.

"Spoilsport," Aren said, punching Rothas in the arm. He pulled a face at Lukas and Merg, who grimaced back. "You don't need a groom-price, all  _ you _ need to do is sing one of them a pretty love song, and they'll be swooning in your arms by sunset."

"And after sunset—" Merg mused lasciviously, his pale skin splotching red at the thought.

"Don't be disgusting," said Lukas. He was the burliest, and he had a full black beard now, at seventeen. He was the oldest of them. He eyed the other tables nearby. "We don't speak of 'after sunsets.'"

"Older men do," Aren said.

"But we have reputations," Lukas insisted, and he poured everyone else a beer before he took his own, just to make a point of it.

"Reputations?" Merg asked, raising a red eyebrow.

Lukas nodded. "We're pure young men," he said. "Haven't tangled with other women, haven't listened to the housewives' bawdy talk, oh no. We're  _ prize _ men, we're kindly men, we're men of culture."

"Our town is the smallest in Lineas, so I don't see how you can talk of culture—"

Lukas glared. "Hush, Rothas, I'm making a speech. We're men of talent. We'll be the very best husbands we can be. I myself know fourteen dances—"

"You're full of it, Lukas," interrupted Aren with an elaborate snort. "What the hell kind of speech is that?"

"Not all of us are songsters or come from wealth," Lukas retorted, pointing at Rothas and Aren respectively. "Some of us need to earn our wives the hard way. Through honest toil and memorization!"

"Marriage is at least three years off for any of us," said Rothas with a big yawn. The yawn, he hoped, disguised his squirming. He hated the way his friends' talk always seemed to turn to girls lately, even if there hadn't been newcomers. It was like they'd forgotten the good things in life: singing, hunting, the beer at the end of a day's hard work, the games they played in the woods, overnight camping trips, the salmon run. The sight of bears in the woods. Naming the stars and telling their stories. "Shouldn't we be more worried about who we're going to apprentice to? Save you, Aren, of course."

As the Matriarch's son, Aren was already technically apprenticed to his father, the village's Warchief, but Aren's father—like everyone else's—was up north, defending the Linean border from the warring armies of Baires and Valdemar.

"You don't need apprenticing, Sunsinger," Lukas groused, "you've got a voice to make gods weep. We all know what you're going to be."

"With all that grumbling, you're going to become the village's doomsayer," Rothas retorted. Their village's doomsayer was a withered husk of a man who read miserable fates into every tisane cup, heavenly body, and spill of entrails. He wasn't, it was generally agreed upon, a very good diviner. He was more of a beggar with a fancy title.

Lukas, predictably, took umbrage to that comment, and began to yell; and everyone else laughed, because Lukas was at heart good-natured and silly with no temper to speak of, and he'd no sooner started his loud blustering than he started laughing, and then they were downing their cups and refilling them, and they'd stopped, for the moment, talking of women.

Unease stayed with Rothas as the friends drank, because the girls were looking their way. One of them, with hair almost as golden as Rothas's own, kept trying to catch his eye.

The unease grew and settled around Rothas like a noose. Soon, he bid goodbye to his friends and turned for home, giving the women's table a wide berth. As always, he paused at the cross-roads just before his house, where the rightmost turn led into the thick pine forest. At this time of night, lit by a gibbous moon, there was a low creeping mist beneath the trees. It looked welcoming, mysterious, wonderfully chilling. The forest was more of a home to Rothas than the house his father built.

Like most Linean homes, that house was wood, with two stories, and a very steeped roof. The main floor was a wide open space with a hearth at one end; the second floor was a loft where the family slept. Because Rothas's father had been skilled and planned for a large family, there were three discreet bedrooms upstairs, two of which shared the chimney for added warmth. The one that didn't was used as a storeroom.

Of course, the large family had only been a wishful dream. Rothas's frail mother never conceived again after Rothas's birth, and passed away from the Blue Fever when Rothas was eight.

When Rothas entered the home, his stepmother Wilfrun was waiting, wearing a fur throw and nothing else. The glimpses of her generous body made Rothas's stomach turn. "Dear Rothas," she said, pressing her hand to his cheek. "I've been cold, waiting for you. Come to bed with me, darling boy."

Rothas closed his eyes. He pictured his father on the last day before he marched away with the army, four years ago. His father was as golden as Rothas but brawnier and broad. He took Rothas's hands in his own and said, "Take care of Wilfrun. I worry for her, for she seemed so sad at my parting. A man's place is to protect the women. Keep her safe until I come home."

Rothas promised his father he would, unable even then to speak around the ball of shame that lodged in his throat. His father was too good, too kind, to be allowed to know what Wilfrun did after sunset.

"Don't turn away from me, Rothas," his stepmother said now against his lips. "I know the lusts of a young man, especially one who's been out drinking." Her hands traced his hip. "Come, let me bring you ease."

Rothas held out a hand for her to take. She giggled as they ascended the stairs, while he followed stiffly, like a corn dolly in the hands of a child. One step, another step. Most nights, this was how he kept Wilfrun happy, and quiet, and—safe. This was how he kept his family together, so that his father would have a home to come back to.

Long after sunset he lay beside Wilfrun, wishing he could go to the steamhouse, wanting the rank smell of her gone. He thought, as he always did, of his father. He'd asked Rothas to keep Wilfrun safe. Rothas wished that he'd asked his father, ten years ago, to keep him safe from Wilfrun. Maybe, if he hadn't been so cowardly, he could have saved them all from this shameful secret. But now it was too late.

***

The next morning found Rothas and Aren whistling as they strode through the village, their bows at their backs and their quivers at their hips. The late summer air was crisp. Clouds scudded leisurely over the sun, dappling the land in sunlight and shadow. They were just outside the scraggly fence that marked Dalsfield's border when they came upon an old woman hobbling towards the town.

"Young master songster!" cried the old woman, when the boys had almost passed her.

Rothas stopped short. "Yes?"

"You're a handsome one," said the old woman appreciatively. She looked him boldly up and down. Rothas flinched. He could feel his cheeks catch fire, and he shifted his weight uneasily. He felt Aren mirror his unease, huffing at being overlooked. The old woman continued, "Would you help a wizened old woman? A crust of bread is all that I need."

She was looking at him with eyes as dark and heavy-lidded as Wilfrun's. Her tongue passed over her cracked lip, like a worm curling over dead leaves. Rothas almost staggered backwards. "N-no, I don't—try at the inn, they'll… good day, Grandmother," he stammered.

"But the inn and the town are such a long walk, and I am weary," she croaked at him. He backed up another step, shaking his head.

For a third time she implored him, saying "Surely you can help me, a strong man like yourself?"

Rothas gulped and all but fled down the road, and Aren was pulling at his sleeve, saying, "No, wait, Rothas, we've got lunch we could—"

A cloud passed over the sun; a sudden wind set the trees tossing. Long grass lashed at Rothas's legwraps. There was a power in the air, a pressure. Rothas had, up until this point, not known what magic felt like. He knew it now. He turned to face the old woman.

She was there for a moment and then light seemed to shoot out of her all at once and was, just that fast, gone: leaving behind a tinker-woman with long golden hair, a young face, her travel-stained cloak snapping in a wind that shouldn't have been strong enough to move the heavy fabric. She was glaring at Rothas. "What a lovely man, with a lovely voice," she cried, and there was a tolling behind her own voice, as of deep bells. "What a wretched, blackened heart you have. I sought to have you, but I knew you must be tested: and look! There is no compassion in you. So, they call you Sunsinger? Then sing only to the sun! You will never enjoy the warmth of a woman's touch in the night! You will never enjoy a nightly revel again. You will never break my curse!"

She clapped three times. Rothas staggered, his stomach rebelling. The air was a hundred colours he had no name for, waving in hazy ribbons around him. He thought, for a moment, that he saw the moon; and the moon was snatched away; and the sun hurt his eyes.

Then he was on his knees in the road, rubbing at his face. The tinker-woman—the sorceress—was gone. Aren knelt by him.

"Rothas? She just yelled at you and then left. I don't understand… Rothas, look at me!"

Rothas looked up into Aren's safe, masculine face. "I don't know," he mumbled. "It all happened so fast. Like a tale or a song. She's cursed me, I felt it. I mean, I've never felt a curse before, but this was definitely it. Aren, help me! Who can break a curse?"

Aren's face fell. "The doomsayer?" he suggested.

***

The doomsayer bid them catch a small hedge-thrush, and then he cut open the bird on the flat stone in his yard. He regarded the entrails with beady simple eyes. "You're cursed," he said.

"I  _ know," _ said Rothas. "We already told you that!"

"What kind of curse?" Aren broke in.

"Eh, eh," said the doomsayer, flapping a stick-like hand at the two young men. "Let the blood dry a little, the guts there are too shiny for these old eyes of mine to focus properly."

Rothas scuffed the dirt under his shoe. The goosebumps on his skin were still there. He had a chill, despite the full blaze of the sun's light. He had a feeling he already knew what the curse was. He was thinking,  _ Wilfrun will be furious _ .

"At night you will fall into a death-like slumber," said the doomsayer gummily. He was missing most of his teeth, and the harder he tried to emphasize, the more obvious it was. "That's the meat of the curse. You'll never look at the stars again. Bit of an odd one, really."

"She wants me to never love a woman," said Rothas. Suddenly he felt almost cheerful. Wilfrun wouldn't be able to argue with a curse. "That's all."

"That's  _ awful," _ Aren said feelingly. "I don't understand why she was so wroth."

"There's got to be a way to break it, though, isn't there?" Rothas asked. It was always good to know how to break one's curse, just in case you needed to later on.

The doomsayer shook his head. "You've offended a mighty sorceress, a node-crafter. I know of no one with enough power to break this, Sunsinger. You'll never be freed of it."

Rothas kicked at the road as they headed back out towards the woods from the doomsayer's house. Aren said, patting his arm, "Well, the doomsayer's hardly infallible."

They hunted, because they'd promised several villagers meat, and then they went out for beers. There were no tinker-women at the tavern that night. Rothas went home in a sort of daze, having drank a little too much, his mind skittering around the fact of his curse. The sky was streaked with orange and purple when he walked into his house.

He never made it as far as his bed.

He woke to Wilfrun shrieking as soon as his eyes opened. She smacked him several times in the face, babbling, "Are you well, are you well? Respond! Can you feel me? Can you hear me?"

The rest of that day was a blur. Wilfrun eventually got the truth of the curse from him; then she had to petition the Matriarch to arrest and punish the tinker-women or maybe just the sorceress; but they learned that the tinker-women had left the previous afternoon, shortly after Rothas had been cursed. There would be no retaliation, no way for the Matriarch to even do so much as request the sorceress undo her curse.

"And what about this curse?" demanded Wilfrun, standing in the yard in front of the Matriarch's mansion. She'd gathered a small crowd around her.

The Matriarch, Aren's mother, sighed. She was a handsome woman with her hair bound firmly in white linen. She wore the traditional embroidered band around her forehead like any good Linean woman, but a wealth of silver and gold rings and loops and triangles cascaded down from her temples, jingling whenever she moved. Most women only had a ring or two on their bands; elaborate temple rings were the easy way to spot a town's Matriarch. She said, "I understand this is a violation of law, Wilf, but the sorceress is  _ gone _ . Who would you like me to send after her, hmm? Our doomsayer? We'd have to send for a mage at Highjorune, and that will take days, and who do we have to spare? And, really, most of us sleep in the night-time anyway. It's an inconvenient curse, to be sure, but it's not life-threatening. He'll sleep soundly the whole night—damn, I wish I did! I wish my husband did too, since when he comes back from the war I might kill him myself if he snores as loud as I remember!"

Everyone laughed, except Wilfrun and Rothas. The Matriarch adored her husband, and like most of the village women, pined in silence for her man to come back from the border. But the men were still needed, and everyone else was just left behind to run life lopsided. Rothas decided he didn't want the curse lifted at all. He said, "The Matriarch has a point, Step-mother." He never called Wilfrun 'Mother.' He stared at her, challenging her to protest, challenging her to tell all of Dalsfield just why she was so eager to have this curse lifted.

Wilfrun looked away first. "Very well," she said, anger making her waspish. "Maybe I'll travel to Highjorune and beseech the mages there."

The Matriarch glowered. "Wilf, don't be ridiculous. You've never travelled a day in your life. You think it's easy to walk to Highjorune?"

And to Rothas's profound satisfaction, the matter was dropped that day. Rothas Sunsinger was a cursed bard, and that only seemed to add to his reputation. Women might sigh at him, but only from afar. And Wilfrun no longer cavorted with him after sunset.


	6. Highjorune

_Dalsfield to Highjorune, Lineas_   
_83-84 AF_

They brought home the bodies in the fall.

Rothas's father lay among them, white and still and nothing like what Rothas remembered. He looked like Rothas, but more square in the face, and whiskered. Grey in his brown hair. There were already coins over his eyes. The dead lay in the little field by the barrow, by the small temple to the Hunter God, and there were people all around weeping. The air smelled like smoke from torches and cookfires, and the lime on the bodies masked the death-smell.

Four of the village men were still alive; several were lost forever, but many more lay here in the field. The Valdemaran soldiers had slain them, the four survivors said. At the border.

Rothas didn't know how to weep. He helped bury the dead in the barrow, then to scatter the autumn leaves across the threshold to warn the spirits that no, of course there were no dead bodies here for them to plunder.

And then he went home, gathered everything he cared to take with him in his rucksack, took his bow and his quiver and his long knife, and left his home forever.

Wilfrun, mourning with the women, would return to an empty house.

He supposed, some hours later on the road to Highjorune, that he would have liked to say good-bye to Aron and the others. But the truth was that he'd drifted apart from all his friends since the curse. He'd been drifting farther and farther away from Dalsfield in his heart, and leaving felt like the most correct thing in the world.

The long nights complicated travel. Rothas grew groggy at dusk, and so he needed to always keep an eye on the sun so that he could find a place to hole up for the night, away from robbers. He had some practice at this, from overnight hunting trips. He was good at finding abandoned badger setts and root-laced overhangs, though he woke up most mornings damp and irritable, and shivering despite his bear-lined cloak. He preferred nights when he could find towns with inns to stay at.

One morning—not far from Highjorune, about a fortnight from when he'd set out from Dalsfield—he woke from his sleep in the depression of an immense oak to find a young man about his age rifling through his rucksack.

"HEY!" cried Rothas, lunging forward to slap the man's hands away. "Those are mine!"

The young man sat back on his heels and grinned. "Oh, so you're awake now. That's good! That's wonderful!"

Rothas snatched up his rucksack and glared at the young man. "Who are you?" he snapped. "A bandit?"

The young man scoffed. "Hardly!" he said, in a great lusty voice that made Rothas's head spin. He was a fine-boned and dusky-skinned lad, with long brown-black hair that framed his face, though most of it was caught up in a messy horsetail. He had a ragged traveller's cap perched on his head, a pheasant feather in the brim. His clothes, in blue and yellow, were well-sewn and meticulously patched, and there was a good deal of dust and mud on his boots. "I am only occasionally the liberator of goods. Hardly a common thief, for, as you see, I have left your pack intact! Yes, yes, I was just making sure you had food. Because I wanted to share it." Rothas went through his belongings, grumbling, and found it all out of order, but nothing was missing.

"No," said Rothas. "I shan't share food with you."

"Hear me out, my good man," said the stranger.

"I don't even know your name. You reek of discourtesy," Rothas retorted.

The stranger put his hand on his heart, and from his squat, made a ridiculous bow. "I am Jakoben Kestrelson, formerly of Highjorune, now of the high road! You can call me Jak, or Ben, or Kestrel."

"Rothas Sunsinger, from Dalsfield," Rothas grunted.

"A singer!"

 _Did Jak ever speak normally?_ Rothas wondered. Jak declaimed as enthusiastically as a child.

Jak continued, "I could use a singer. I mean, we can make us some good coin with that. Honest coin," he said, with a sideways glance at Rothas's rucksack.

It was a good thing Jak had stumbled upon Rothas in the morning, and not during the night, before Rothas could wake. Otherwise Rothas would have awoken stark naked and with nothing to call his own.

But the truth was that Rothas was nearly out of food and coin both. "You say you're from Highjorune, Jak-Thief," Rothas said.

"Not a thief! Not… precisely…" Jak said.

Rothas arched an eyebrow. "You're some kind of thief," said Rothas, "But I need a guide to Highjorune. You show me where I can sing for coin in Highjorune, and I'll split the coin with you, sound fair?"

Jak hesitated.

"What?" Rothas asked.

Jak sighed dramatically and put a hand to his forehead. "I got reasons for not wanting to be in Highjorune, that's true enough. But truth's it won't make much matter now, since it's been a good three years. I sprouted, some, since … since then."

"Right. Well."

"I'll do it!" said Jak. "I'll take you to Highjorune and we'll make some monies and live like Matriarchs!"

"Heavens," said Rothas, "Not that. I don't want to make that many decisions."

Jak laughed, and Rothas found himself laughing, and suddenly having an unexpected companion felt more like a windfall then a threat. Not that Rothas trusted Jak particularly. When he sang some travelling songs, and Jak's eyes widened in surprise and pleasure, he saw Jak knew his value. He'd got Jak's measure all right: Jak was lazy and on the run from something, and he wasn't going to turn around and backstab the chicken that lay the golden eggs. There was that much for insurance.

Highjorune was, as Rothas expected, much larger than Dalsfield. The city tumbled down one side of a big hill, the type known as a drumlin, and it was wound 'round with a gigantic wood palisade on the steeper side. Highjorune was backed by thick forests and the Jorune River. Both forest and river stretched to the west where they reached the shore of the Evendim Sea, that much Rothas already knew. The forests were purified, so it was told, by the Hawkfolk of Highjorune: the mages that Rothas had come seeking. As it was mid-autumn, the forest blazed in a riot of gold, ochre and crimson, shot through with sentinels of dark pine.

Rothas and Jak had come from the south—Dalsfield being about as south as you could go and still be in Lineas—and so the road spilled down the drumlin towards them. They broke out of tree-cover into fields, some golden, some harvested, and some fallow, spread along the sides of the road. When they came to the Highjorune gates, they found them open, beckoning; and laughing, friendly guardsmen let them in.

Rothas had explained to Jak that he slept more than most; but on their first night in Highjorune Jak noticed that Rothas could not stay awake at night. He wheedled out the story of the curse. "A cursed singer!" Jak cried, so loud Rothas just about clapped his hands over his ears. "That's a wonderful selling point, Rothas!" They were in their room at the Buckling Beech, which had one large bed and a small table and just enough floor-space for their rucksacks too.

Jak had a particular way of saying Rothas's name. _Rrrothas_ , a rolling purr. It was irritatingly sensual. Rothas realized he kept staring at Jak's long eyelashes over those canny hazel eyes that were so bright in his dark tanned face. Rothas realized with great dismay that Jak was attractive.

Attractive as no woman had even been to Rothas.

Since attraction was frightening, he turned his attentions instead to charming the people of Highjorune. Because a bard usually made most of his coin in the evenings, Rothas had a real problem. The nights were lengthening considerably. The Buckling Beech, a mid-range inn that was charmed against lice and other pests, was not going to give Rothas a bard's discount if Rothas could not play.

"We're just going to have to lean on your curse," said Jak on the second day in Highjorune.

"I don't really want everyone to know. I'll get robbed in the night," said Rothas.

"I'll watch your back," Jak assured him cheerfully. "Besides, here, I can help a little. I have one of these," and he brought out a bone pipe and began to play.

Jak was not a bard by profession or by talent. He knew some odd popular tunes and had a good ear for picking up more, provided they were simple enough. He made mistakes often. He sufficed to play at the street corners, a small enhancement to the fuller, richer mastery that was Rothas's voice. And what he could also do was serve as introduction, using his ridiculous enthusiasm to talk up Rothas and win him places to sing around the city.

The curse _did_ add to Rothas's reputation. They made more coin that he expected, filling up the hat Jak placed on the street. They paid the whole winter upfront at the Buckling Beech. They bought new clothes: Rothas in fine reds that offset his shining golden hair, and a new cap with a scarlet feather, and a dagged hood of warm yellow to keep the wind off his ears. Jak bought a darker blue tunic and striped white-and-blue leggings. He also bought a warm cloak, since his old one had been barely sufficient to get him to Highjorune. Jak and Rothas together went on a whim to get their ears pierced: Jak wore two silver rings, and Rothas one gold in his right ear.

Their new finery helped them as they began to take commissions, for now they looked the part. They played and sang at a winter wedding, at the birthday parties of the well-to-do. Three different temples—one dedicated to stately Tyreena, one to Astera of the Stars, and one to Rothas's own hunt-god Horneth—paid well for Rothas to sing for them, though on principle Rothas turned down his payment at the Temple to Horneth.

One morning, as they took a late lunch in their room in the Beech, Rothas said, "I know the curse grants me—this performance thing—a great deal of… lustre, but I'd really rather not be cursed."

"Soundsh 'boaw ri'," mumbled Jak around a mouthful of fresh scone.

"So I'm going to have to find one of the Tayledras in the Vale behind the city," said Rothas. "Since apparently those are the only mages to be found in the city at all." He'd asked the priests if they could remove the curse, after he sang at temples, but each time he'd been directed to ask the Tayledras instead. But the Tayledras seldom came out of the Vale, and usually only by the High Matriarch's request.

Jak swallowed his scone. "I'm sure we can find you an introduction," he said. "But you had that service at Astera's temple today, that party tomorrow… Rothas, you've agreed to be booked up for a week."

"Yes," said Rothas, leaning back on the bed. He curled his fingers underneath his head and stared at the ceiling. "Guess I better stop saying 'yes' to everything. We've got a goodly amount of coin." They were storing it in a little box under the bed.

"I suppose," said Jak. He moved the breakfast tray onto the floor and began to run his fingers through Rothas's hair.

Rothas shivered with the delight of Jak's fingers on his scalp. He bit his lip, trying to contain himself. All thoughts of the curse and of the mysterious Tayledras mages were whisked away at once. There was only Jak and the bed and the rising heat and the pressing urge to stuff down his feelings. He couldn't hide his reactions; he could feel his ears burning, and then cool delight shivering through him when Jak ran his fingers over his ear. As Jak bound up his hair with a scrap of leather, Rothas felt boneless and confused.

Jak snaked around him on the bed, took a half-second to look into Rothas's eyes with a small strange smile on his face, and then he kissed Rothas full on the mouth.

It felt nothing like Wilfrun, nothing like a woman; there was the scrape of barely-shaven whiskers, the shape of entirely different lips slightly chapped from the winter wind. And Jak knew how to do interesting things. Lust surged through Rothas unbidden, as if he'd found a well inside him with a water so sweet he'd never before tasted its like. And having tasted it, could not get enough.

Rothas had never imagined lying with another man; he'd never imagined feeling pleasure in an intimate act. In Jak's arms he was seen, known, familiar. There were strong, safe hands guiding him through the newness. An act once tainted with a woman's coarseness and stinging shame was replaced with hunger and boyish laughter and _giddiness_.

He wept, afterwards, quietly to himself. Jak was asleep and did not hear. Rothas was cleansed, and he wept for joy.


	7. Flight from Highjorune

_Highjorune_   
_84 AF_

Rothas spent a happy winter in Highjorune, moving from daytime gig to daytime gig. He and Jak lay with each other as often as they could, which wasn't as often as Rothas wanted: the winter nights were so long and he slept soundly from dusk to dawn. His short days were busy. He made connections, and then tentative friendships with other musicians. He learned new songs. Women flirted with him, but shielded by his relationship with Jak, he only laughed at them and felt neither disgust nor fear. Eventually gossip ran through the city, for he and Jak were not secretive, and women came to him less and less.

And so, somehow, seeking an audience with a Tayledras mage seemed less and less important. He put off seeking out the High Matriarch to make an appointment. He forgot to ask her even when he met her, at a stately holiday service at the Temple of Tyreena. The curse had become part of him now. Normal. His. It had brought him good fortune, saving him first from Wilfrun, then from obscurity. The gold piled into the box below the bed. How the curse had backfired on the sorceress who cast it! Rothas was famed throughout Highjorune! He bought himself yet another suit of even nicer clothe:, a tunic of brocade, a fine belt with a golden buckle shaped like a wolf's head, a rich red mantle. He assumed the manners of Highjorune and began to speak in the fluting accent of the richer folk, his bard's ear picking it up as if he'd been born to it. Jak had to work to match him, for Jak had a rougher voice.

Rothas passed his seventeenth birthday. He assumed everything would stay as it was; that the world of Highjorune was his, and would always be his.

When it fell apart, it fell apart as abruptly as a lightning strike.

It was warming as spring neared, but that only meant it rained more. Rothas woke up at a chilly dawn with the bed empty beside him. He reached over to find that Jak's spot was cold. That wasn't usual. After his morning ablutions he hurried to the kitchen and asked if anyone had seen Jak.

"That one? Hasn't come home from his nightly revels, hmm?" asked one of the servers, a tough-armed short old woman.

"His nightly—what?" Rothas asked stupidly.

The server, presently washing dishes, paused, soap bubbling around her elbows. "Oh, poor young Bard," she said, with a painful sympathy, "you didn't expect a flighty man like him to be true, did you?"

Rothas felt the blood drain from his face. His heart thudded with a sudden rough pain. He whirled around and took the stairs three at a time, and fumbled the box from under the bed and gave it a shake. Opening it confirmed that most of the money was _gone._ He hadn't been checking it everyday. He'd thought it was near full. He'd joked just yesterday about buying another one! And what had Jak said? What had he done? Had he looked guilty? Had he been uneasy? By Horneth's beard, Rothas couldn't remember at all!

The remaining money went into Rothas's purse. He had all his clothes and effects packed in moments.

He took everything with him, because trust is a slender thread and hard to repair once frayed.

The server, seeing him arrayed for travel, nodded with a grim smile. "I think you'll find him at the Seven Stars," she said helpfully. "You won't get a refund for the rooms here, though."

"That's fine," said Rothas. "Thank you."

Jak _was_ at the Seven Stars, in a room with two naked women curled up under his arms. They blinked sleepily as Rothas crashed into the room.

Jak did not try overly hard to defend himself. Rothas found himself roaring. There were accusations, insults; he could barely hear himself. The girls shrieked and moused around for clothing, and fled as soon as dressed. The innkeeper, a large rolling woman, shouted at them both until they left her inn. Now there were in the centre of a city square with shutters banging as people came to listen to Rothas berate Jak for lying, for betrayal, for stealing the money.

When Rothas demanded his share of the money back, Jak whined, "Well, it's all spent now, isn't it?"

"On _what_?"

"Wine," said Jak sulkily, "Girls, I had to pay the girls, and—"

"I wasn't enough for you?! That you needed girls?" cried Rothas.

"You are _asleep_ for the _entire night_ ," Jak whined. "How's a man supposed to get some fun? I didn't think you'd _mind."_

Rothas was sputtering, incoherent. There was a begrudging breeze stealing through the square that seemed to catch on itself, twisting around Rothas and Jak. The bucket over the well spasmed. Jak reached up to brush his hair out of his eyes, and a twister started around his calves. Rocks and pebbles flung up, striking Jak but no one else; and before Rothas quite knew what had happened, the twister was growing. Jak screamed as it enveloped him. He covered his face with his arms, his body shrinking away from the pummelling. Larger stones were being drawn into the twister, and spat into Jak.

Rothas didn't know why, but he urged on this sudden wild ally. "Serves you _right_ ," he yelled bitterly against the howl of the twister and Jak's yelps. He didn't notice the other people in the square screaming until the screaming ground to a sudden, complete halt.

On the other side of the square, a woman lifted her hand. The twister collapsed. Jak collapsed too, into a shaking, bruised, snotty mess. There were little cuts on him too, and they were bleeding.

The entire square looked to the woman who had stopped the twister. She and her companion, an older man, were white-haired as elders, but had smooth ageless faces. The woman wore a robe with several belts that held different things—vials, pouches—on her waist; the man wore a long tunic and a fringed cape. Both of them sparkled in beadwork. They were not nobility, precisely, but all Highjorune treated them as such: these were Tayledras mages, and they protected Lineas from the ravaging Pelagiris and the twisted magic of the storms.

Now the Tayledras were looking at Rothas with cold clear eyes. Rothas felt a trembling panicky exhaustion seize his body. They were coming closer, and there was a stiff anger in every line of them.

"You are an untrained mage, and not given license to cause mayhem in this city," said the woman.

"I'm no mage!" cried Rothas. "I'm a _bard."_

_"_ Nonetheless," said the woman, "you have without discipline caused harm to another person, and made a mess of this square." And that was true; the paving stones were damaged and in disarray, and the square was strewn with debris. Rothas gulped.

The woman continued, "You cannot, by the laws of Highjorune, stay here untrained; you must go elsewhere for training."

"Where will I go?" asked Rothas. "Why can't you teach me? I need you _help_. I'm under a curse! That's why I'm in the city to begin with."

"We know of your curse, Sunsinger," said the man. "But you never came to us for help, and now you have caused harm to the city. An untrained mage with undisciplined passions causes grief to all around him."

"So, what, you just toss all young mages to the wolves?" cried Rothas. "How is that fair? If you see a child with this 'untrained magic' you claim I possess, do you exile them, too?"

The mages glared at him. "We find them a school," said the man.

"Cometfall, don't engage—" said the woman.

"Oh, so I can't be found a school?" cried Rothas. Anger was sweating out of him. The winds were stirring again, and Rothas could almost believe it was himself who called them to come swirling in at his defense. He saw the fringes on the Tayledras clothing, and their long braided hair, whip up into the windstorm—

—and the woman shook her head and the windstorm never came into its own. Rothas felt something cool and implacable slam into his mind… or _over_ his mind, like a bowl. It made Rothas dizzy and he staggered on his feet.

"No," the woman said. The bowl containing Rothas's mind was _her_ magic. The bowl seemed to ring with the same tone as her voice when Rothas tested his willpower against it. "You are not a child, and I would not foist you on any upstanding Linean mage. It is not our responsibility."

What _was_ their responsibility was hauling Rothas and the cowering Jak before the High Matriarch of Highjorune, in her tiled courtroom at the peak of the drumlin. She was a tall woman, in her fifties, with temple rings hung with little precious gems, her robes thick with embroidery. She heard out the Tayledras with thinned lips, and looked long and hard at Rothas.

Her eyes changed when she looked at him, and he recognized avarice: for a moment it seemed the Matriarch was Wilfrun, sizing him up and down like a prize calf. Rothas squirmed inside his skin, though he forced himself to be still. When women looked at him, all they ever seemed to see were his broad shoulders, his slim hips, his golden hair and the symmetry of his face. They never cared for his talents, or his desires, or whether he had a personality at all; he was attractive, they wanted to tumble him. It made his skin crawl.

For a moment, waiting on the Matriarch's judgement, he imagined he lived in a world governed by men instead of Matriarchs; they would value his skills, not his beauty. Men would be fair, he thought. They cared about protecting the weak and the innocent. Women just wanted to preserve their power, and maintain the same laws people had always followed, and that meant controlling all the men in their grasp. It just wasn't fair.

However, as he waited, the lust in the Matriarch's eyes ebbed, and when she gave her ruling he found no argument to summon against it.

"Since Jakoben Kestrelson is a known thief and he squandered his share already, he is to have none of the money remaining to you, Rothas Sunsinger. However, you will be fined for the damage to the square." She named a sum that was nearly all of what Sunsinger had. "And you have until nightfall tomorrow to leave the city. You will be escorted by Adept Windstar," the Matriarch nodded to the angry Tayledras woman, "who _will_ teach you some basic control of your power."

"I will not," said Windstar sharply. "Let Cometfall do it."

"I don't want to learn from her anyway," Rothas said.

The Matriarch sighed. "Whichever mage has the patience to watch this boy and make sure he doesn't ruin anything by accident can do it; I don't much care _who_ as long as he's not a threat to Lineas. I believe you, Rothas, that you're just angry and heartbroken and young, and never knew you had power before." She shot a disgusted look at the mutinous, glowering Jak. "I hope you'll have better taste in lovers in the future."

Rothas left, with a bemused-looking Cometfall beside him, feeling like his previous thoughts hadn't been altogether fair either. The Matriarch had made a ruling in his favour, and he couldn't fault her for fining him. As the anger drained out of him, he felt contrite. He really hadn't meant to damage anything.

"Can you break my curse?" Rothas asked Cometfall. "A wandering sorceress in Dalsfield cursed me."

Cometfall blinked slowly. "Why?"

"I don't…" Rothas kicked a stone on the street and sighed. "Because she tricked me. She was testing me, like in a song, but it was kind of stupid." He explained the story, saying, "But really, the inn was _right there_. She'd already been walking up the road, and Aren and I had only packed enough food to sustain us through the hunt!"

"That was capricious of her," Cometfall said. "I am a Healer-Adept. We must ask Windstar to look at your curse."

"No," said Rothas.

Cometfall stopped walking and looked at Rothas mildly for a long time. Rothas gave in.

Though Cometfall had sent no messenger, Windstar was waiting for them in the little park that Cometfall led him to. She sneered impatiently as Cometfall explained Rothas's story.

"I don't see why breaking the curse is our responsibility," said Windstar.

"We can at least investigate it, in the interests of understanding another mage's magic. Besides, you didn't lift the shield on his magic." Cometfall's mild manners seemed to coat an interior hard as iron.

The cool bowl was lifted out of Rothas's mind abruptly. He shook his head at the loss of it, and fidgeted as Windstar stared at him, with concentration now instead of contempt.

Then she pulled back. "It's a conditional curse," she said with surprise. "But she never laid out conditions for you to follow. Sloppy work, but … dangerously sloppy. An Adept, but only half-trained, I should think," she said to Cometfall. To Rothas she added, "I cannot remove this curse from you. That is the trouble of curses: it is hard for them to be removed by another person. I could try and I would kill you, most likely. I will not do that."

"You seemed to want me to suffer earlier," said Rothas with some heat.

Windstar raised her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and exhaled gently. "I am not patient by nature," she said, "and I wanted to stop you from harming others. I also had not realized at the time that you were suffering your first heartbreak, and that you did not know you had power."

"I'm not _heartbroken,_ " Rothas protested.

The two Tayledras looked at him, and crossed their arms in unison.

Rothas sighed. He could see Windstar was offering him as much apology as a proud woman like her could manage, and, since she was telling him about his curse, he shouldn't be so churlish as to hold a grudge. After all, she had protected him too, in the square.

"You said something about a condition," he said.

"Your sorceress had little imagination," said Windstar, and she was contemptuous again, but with the absent sorceress this time. "The curse will be lifted when you lie with your true love."

"Well, that will make telling true lovers from false easier," Rothas said with a hysterical laugh, "Did my curse break? No? Guess we're parting ways!"

Windstar looked at Cometfall, who nodded slightly, then back at Rothas. "There is another component," she said. "After all, your sorceress was not bright. The true love in question _must_ be a woman."

The inside of Rothas's heart seemed to turn inside-out. "No," he said, around the rushing in his ears. "That's not… no."

Cometfall placed a hand on Rothas's shoulder, which grounded him. He looked into the strange faces of the Tayledras, and realized these strangers knew him better than he knew himself, and it made him feel petty and small and confused.

"There is another way to break it," said Windstar.

"Tell me!"

She sighed. "It's a hard way. You need to learn your magic, and seek out ways to increase your power, by practice or by the use of amplification: rituals, objects of power, and so on. We cannot take you in, because k'Jorune Vale is a vulnerable place. There is a great poison on the land, left over from the great wars, and from the magic storms. Untrained mages who are not of our people could damage the balance badly, do you understand? You cannot stay here to be trained, and we cannot spare any mages. I can give you a reference that you can show to schools—I know! I said I wouldn't!" She scowled. "But Cometfall is right, as usual."

Cometfall smiled mysteriously.

"All right," said Rothas, who didn't understand entirely, "I'll take a reference to a school. Say I attain great power. What then?"

"Then you simply unhook the curse from your being," said Cometfall. "You will know how to break it by then, because you will have studied it."

"That's vague," Rothas complained.

Windstar shrugged. "Magic often is," she said.

Windstar left after that. Cometfall taught Rothas several breathing exercises to use to control and contain Rothas's power, and how to ground it into the earth again afterwards. Rothas was glad it was Cometfall teaching him, and not Windstar.

In the afternoon, Rothas went to play at his usual streetcorner. He made enough money to cover a night at a different inn—he didn't want to go where Jak might find him, nor did he want memories haunting him—and there was enough coin left over to purchase travel food and an old-but-sound horse. Windstar gave him a letter of recommendation and a sheet with directions to two mage schools.

And then he left Highjorune, not quite in disgrace, to seek a teacher and a better fortune. He must find magic to break his curse, for he would never lie with a woman ever again.


	8. A Costume and a Curse

_Silverkeep, Lineas_  
_86 AF_

A very fat cream-and-brown cat jumped onto Dayna's porch, waddled over to the spread of glitzy clothing, and lay down right in the middle of Lythe's sewing.

"Podgey!" cried Dayna in dismay. "We're working on that."

For the first time in hours, Lythe burst out laughing. Podgey was the laziest cat she'd ever met: he was the size of a cask of beer, about as round, and usually with as much energy—unless Dayna had something to do, and then he was a nuisance. Lythe paused her sewing and leaned back to watch Dayna pick threads out of Podgey's fluffy feet.

"We don't have much daylight left," Lythe commented, pulling the sleeve of the costume loose and resuming her task of sewing fringe onto the underside. The fringe was long and feathery, which was what she wanted. She hoped that when she danced at the wedding tomorrow, she would resemble a firebird and not the tall trees that stood in the southern marsh with red and yellow moss dripping off their broad limbs.

"Are you worried?" Dayna asked. She grunted as she wrapped her arms around Podgey and heaved him off the deck. He landed with a definite thump and yowled morosely at Dayna.

"Not exactly," said Lythe. "I think we can get the fringe on tonight, and then that's over with. You don't mind keeping it 'til tomorrow? I do not want Mother to see it. Ever."

Dayna nodded, her eyes sober as she looked down at the sewing. "Of course I will." Lythe's mother would never allow Lythe to dance at a wedding, any wedding, and most especially not for pleasure of the Matriarch's daughter and her husband-to-be. The girls lived in Silverkeep, one of the most prosperous towns in Lineas. The Matriarch was sparing no expense for her daughter's wedding, and she was going to pay Lythe in real coin to dance. The plan was for Lythe to take the coin and run as soon as she'd given her performance and collected her payment, and, Dayna thought forlornly, never return. Not that Dayna could blame Lythe at all: with a mother like hers, Dayna would want to leave too.

There could be no truer test of friendship, thought Dayna as she plied her bone needle through the veil-weight flame-coloured linen, than helping your best friend escape even though it meant you'd never see them again.

"I hope you'll be safe," whispered Dayna.

"I'll be safer once I'm out of Silverkeep," said Lythe. Her sewing faltered. "Come away with me?" she pleaded, inadvertently.

Dayna looked over to where Podgey was trying to lick his rump and mostly just rolling around looking confused with his tongue curled out. The sun's rays speared orange and gold through the tall stand of trees by the packed dirt road, and inside the house she could hear her own mother singing softly as she wove. "I couldn't," she told Lythe. Was this what heartbreak felt like? she wondered. Surely this pain belonged to the love of romantic songs and tales, not to a simple plain friendship between girls who'd played together in the cradle.

"I really can't," Dayna added softly. "You know that, I… my home, my brothers… how could I leave them? I don't _want_ to leave them!"

Lythe sighed and resumed sewing. She looked out at the gilded trees. "We haven't much time," she said. "It'll be dark soon." She shivered. She needed her sleep tonight, and so she needed to actually be home by bedtime. She'd have to shut herself and her feelings down, bring up her mental walls again. She looked over at Dayna's fair head as she tied a deft knot at the edge of her sewing. Leaving Dayna would be one of the hardest things about her plan. That and… figuring out what to do after. But there'd never been a day go by that she hadn't at least seen Dayna.

The light faded as they put the final stitches into the costume. Lythe sagged with relief as she cut the very last thread with Dayna's precious bronze snips.

"LYTHE!" the voice called, deceptively melodic with an undertone of exasperation. "LYTHE! Where is that girl? Come out at once!"

Lythe's mother was trudging up the road.

"Hide it!" cried Lythe, eyes wide. She bundled up the costume, and Dayna held open the sack they were storing it in. The two girls just tightened the drawstring when Lythe's mother came around the corner and in view of the porch.

"Lythe, you get down here this instant! The Lady of Stars alone knows just how much trouble you put me through today. Do you realize you've been gone the entire day?" she demanded. "What parts of it you weren't sleeping away, anyway!"

Lythe put on her child's face, and screwed up her nose at Dayna. "Guess I better go!" she said. With the sun not entirely set, she watched dismay crease Dayna's face, and felt guilty for it.

"You're welcome," Dayna said dryly. She waved to Lythe's mother. "Good eve, Aunt Ysold! Has the day been warm?"

"Too warm, from all the work I needed to do, alone," Lythe's mother said, with a pointed look at Lythe.

Lythe skipped down off the porch and ran to her mother's side. "I'll see you at the wedding, Dayna!" she cried, as her mother's hand clawed into her shoulder and spun her around on the road.

"I don't know that I should let you go to the wedding, Lythe," said her mother in a tired, put-upon voice. "I had to make flatcakes this morning myself, and sweep the house, and you know I am not a maid for you: you live in our house too, and at your age you should be working harder at real work, not that—prancy nonsense. Art is best left to men, who have all the time in the world to practice frivolity. You will be a woman someday, Lythe. As a woman, you will do the most important task in the world. When you have a daughter—or a son, although I think we both know that the goddess Tyreena doesn't have such bad luck in store—you'll realize just how ungrateful you've been. Don't you know how much I need you?"

Lythe thought back to the last time she'd tried to help Ysold make flatcakes. "No, dear, that's _not_ how you mix it!" she'd exclaimed at once. She'd scooped up Lythe's bowl, and proceeded to stir in the milk the way she wanted it done, scolding Lythe for doing it wrong. "See what I do! I do it much neater than you!" But by that point, Lythe had stopped paying attention. What was the use? The only time she ever learned anything was when she could slip away and get someone else in the village to teach her, and hope Ysold wouldn't find her and snatch her away again before she'd finished the lesson.

Ysold continued to catalogue her woes for the entire walk to their house. Be patient, Lythe reminded herself. With any luck, she'd be gone tomorrow.

***

Lythe was sweating before she even pulled on the firebird costume. In the tent by the village square—where sounds of jubilation and drinking overpowered the sounds of musicians tuning their lyres—she felt squished with the other performers. Yet in some ways, she even felt squished by the press of people outside. So many people! The groom was the son of the Matriarch of a very prosperous town in the south, and half his town had shown up to celebrate.

Her mind stumbled around in circles. The war somewhere in the north, between wild Baires and weird Valdemar, had not troubled Lineas except at the border, so it was safe to travel if you went in large groups and knew how to dodge the weirdest parts of the Pelagirs (chiefly by staying on the main roads). If she went south it'd be easier for Ysold to find her. If she went north, there was Highjorune. If she went northeast, she'd find Baires and war. West would bring her to the Evendim Sea, and wilder country. Where would she go?

Dayna slipped around several performers, bearing the firebird mask that was the key to the success of Lythe's escape. The dyed feathers swept back from its leather beak. The eyeholes were cut to match Lythe's eyes comfortably. Glass beads and chips of mica and quartz sparkled and caught the torchlight.

"It's hot like a bread oven in here," Dayna said, coughing. She set down the mask and helped get Lythe's costume fitted right. It was hard to tug on, being linen, and while being cut on the bias gave the fabric some give, much of it needed to wrapped and tied on. The ties blended seamlessly into fringe and feathers. Lythe would go barefoot, as she preferred—it was easier to dance that way.

"I'm so grateful you're helping me," Lythe whispered. "I am terrified my mother is going to find out."

"She shouldn't until tomorrow, and you'll be gone by then," Dayna said. "Don't worry so much… oh Lythe, you're trembling!"

"What if my dance is so poor I don't earn my pay?" Lythe asked, feeling her lower lip tremble. Behind her eyes, a hollow ache started.

Dayna's eyebrows rose. "That won't happen," she told Lythe will all the confidence Lythe herself had felt until she'd woken up in the morning. "You're the best dancer in the village."

"Mother says women shouldn't dance, shouldn't make art, that it's frivolous," Lythe muttered.

Dayna looked around the crowded tent. "That woman's playing a lyre. Or, what about pattern-dances? Courtship? Art belongs to people. Everyone! Men and women alike! You just stop listening to that—that tyrant's babble!"

Lythe put the mask to her face. It smelled strongly of leather and glue, but there were air holes cut in the beak. It was stuffy, but it'd do. "She's my mother, Dayna."

"That doesn't mean she's right. Pfft. Would she call my mother's weaving art? If she didn't, it'd be an insult!"

Dayna's mother was the finest weaver in the entire village. Lythe didn't think Ysold would insult her by claiming it wasn't art.

The musicians filed out. The first of the post-wedding entertainment was Lythe's solo, while the people were still sober enough to appreciate it. Entertainments would be interspersed with casual dancing, the sort that wasn't considered 'art', which Ysold also disapproved of her daughter doing—because it meant Lythe would dance with men. If there was anything Ysold disliked worse than Lythe's dancing, it was any time Lythe spent with young men who might court her, and pull her attentions away from Ysold.

Lythe yanked the leather ties firmly, setting the knot. Her world narrowed to slits above the sequined beak. She stepped out from the tent, following the musicians, and when she emerged from the shadows into the pool of torchlight, she was a firebird.

Music skirled around her, lifted her arms. Her legs kicked. She soared in a leap, she landed, she flew again. She could only see a blur of people, a ring of people and fire to mark where she could dance. There was a drumbeat, there was a flute. Her legs lifted, lowered, tapped; her arms traced flight into the air. She danced for freedom, and then she danced for love, and at the very last, in a whirl of high flute notes, she mimed catching at the arrow that hit her breast. She fell to her knees, arms flung back, head flung back, unaware that her costume had fallen away at the throat, and the ruff of fringe fallen askew. The arc of her sweat-slickened neck gleamed.

She gasped for breath. She felt, more than heard, applause. Somehow she was on her feet again, she bowed, she was following the musicians out of the circle, she was nearly at the tent, her hands were reaching up to untie the mask—

—and the mask was ripped from her face.

"How could you?" cried her mother. "I trusted you!"

"I was asked to dance—"

"And you should have said NO!" bellowed her mother, and the whole town might have heard her if the next performance hadn't started up, featuring big booming drums that seemed the shake the earth. Lythe dizzily stumbled backwards but her mother grabbed her by the arm. "How dare you, after all I've done for you? Are you a cheap slut, parading your body in front of everyone? Are you trying to embarrass me?"

"The Matriarch promised payment—"

Her mother slapped her. The blow caught Lythe by surprise; if her mother had not held her by the arm, she would have fallen. Her ears ringing, she stared up in horror. Her mother had never slapped her before, not since she was a little and spanked for all the things littles got spankings for. But this wasn't the same thing, wasn't common village discipline, wasn't anything Lythe knew how to understand. "So you're selling your body to the village, are you? You belong to me, Lythe," her mother snarled.

Silverkeep was a lakeside town, and it was to the lake that Lythe was dragged, her mother hissing angrily like a kettle the whole while, spewing scoldings like steam. She hadn't slapped Lythe again, but she'd ripped fistfuls of fringes away, torn Lythe's costume to tatters.

"You won't be running away like that," said her mother. "That was what you were going to do, wasn't it? To punish me. You're always trying to punish me, Lythe. What did I do wrong raising you? How could you come to hate me?"

"I—"

"I have done everything for you," her mother said, wringing her hands and Lythe's hands with them. "I toiled for you, day in, day out, since I first bore you. Don't you owe me any respect for all the work I've done? All I've sacrificed? I could have lived a carefree life, but no, I chose to be a mother and care for you."

There was something on the lake, Lythe saw in alarm. Beyond Ysold, there was a silvery haze on the water. But the moon hadn't risen.

"All you do is disrespect me! How could I have gone so wrong, that you are so full of scorn? Always running and hiding from me? I never see you in the daytime! You're always running away! Life's too short to sleep away the daylight, you ungrateful wretch!"

:UNGRATEFUL:

Lythe froze like a hare in the field, trembling with the force of her heartbeat; but Ysold froze entirely and her chest didn't even move. Her hair hung in the air despite the wind that speared coldly from the lake. The voice resounded inside Lythe's head, like a heavy gong, implacable, old, alien.

:YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN GRATEFUL, LOUD WOMAN. YOU DISTURB ME:

Lythe pulled her hands free of Ysold's, and backed away. She'd only taken a small step when her feet seemed to root into the earth. They wouldn't move no matter how she tugged on them.

There was a silvery something roaring out of the lake now, a looming figure made of lashing mists.

:THE LESSON YOU WISH TO TEACH WILL RUIN YOU. THE CHILD WILL NEVER FEEL SUNLIGHT AGAIN. IF SHE DOES, SHE WILL DIE.:

Something poured like water over Lythe. She sobbed raggedly, rubbing her arms, finding them dry though she felt soaked through. She found she could move again as she stumbled. Her mother's hair floated down as the normal world began to reinstate itself. The mist collapsed into the lake. The silvery glow vanished like blown candlelight.

Lythe turned and ran.


	9. Shadowdancer

_Silverkeep to Highjorune, Lineas  
86 AF_

Within two days, all of Silverkeep knew that Lythe was cursed.

The Matriarch herself demanded to see Ysold. First she saw Ysold and Lythe together; then she sent Lythe out again and kept Ysold in the courtroom of the Keep.

Dayna sat with Lythe in the hallway of the Keep, a wooden structure only a bit bigger than the houses of the village. It boasted three floors instead of one, but the courtroom was on the first floor, in the middle. Dayna wondered what the third floor was like. Was it storerooms? She'd never asked. She patted Lythe's hand, over and over, the way she might pet Podgey the cat. Lythe was shaking, pale-lipped, quiet. Dayna was tired and already looking forward to bed, but Lythe had only just woken up.

They couldn't hear anything, but eventually one of the Matriarch's guards escorted Ysold out. He jerked his head at Lythe, his eyes softening over his boar-bristle beard. "Matriarch will see you, Lythe. Ysold, you are to return home as the Matriarch ordered."

"Not without my child!" cried Ysold.

The guard's meaty hand clamped down on Ysold's arm. Gently but with force, he steered her towards the door. "Go," he said.

Dayna sat back against the wall, uncomfortable at Ysold's nearness. She let Lythe go.

Lythe for her part couldn't wait to get away from Ysold's glare. She hurried into the courtroom, clasping her shawl tight from nerves. She curtseyed to the Matriarch and looked up again, unsure what to say.

The Matriarch, a grizzled old woman with tired canny eyes, said, "That was a beautiful dance, your firebird. It brought Lizanne and her young man joy. You are gifted, and now, it seems, you are cursed. I don't know what was in the lake. Ysold had hysterics; well, she was always prone to them." The Matriarch sighed weightily. "I will give you your payment tonight. But first you will tell me what happened at the lake."

Lythe's heart hammered. She explained what she could, the mist and the voice. "But I don't know what kind of power it was, nor manner of creature," she said lowly. "I don't think it means anyone harm except… except my mother, by way of me."

The Matriarch shook her head. "We will see what kind of power it is, and whether it is a threat; if needed, we will send to Highjorune for a mage. Many things were given powers from the Mage-Storms, things we don't understand. Silverkeep has not had a mage to call its own in many a year. And your mother is rabid, Lythe. Here is your payment, then: you will take coin and a horse, and several days' food, and you will ride to Highjorune to find a mage to break your curse. Bring that mage here, to deal with the lake."

Lythe trembled, happy and afraid. The Matriarch waved off her thanks and said gravely, "Spare your voice, Lythe. I'm not doing you much good; you could die on the road well before you reach Highjorune, by sunlight or brigand. But you'll die inside, if you stay with Ysold."

Telling Dayna was hard. Lythe left that night. She cried on Dayna's sleepy shoulder, and felt Dayna soak her shoulder in return.

"Lythe," said Dayna fervently, "even if we've no blood to show for it, you are my sister. If I can ever help you… if you can ever come back… please…"

"I have to leave," said Lythe, "and I want to, but the worst thing about it is leaving you behind. But I'll bring back a mage."

"And afterwards, stay," said Dayna. "Come live with me and my parents. How do you know those Highjorune mages will even be able to break the spell?"

But Lythe was unsure she would stay, after. Silverkeep had grown small. She didn't want to live near a lake that cursed her; didn't want to live in a town where everyone knew her mother had cursed her. Not even for Dayna with her big brown eyes swimming in tears.

She had no memory, really, of how she ever found the Matriarch's horse, or located the saddlebags that contained coinage, food, and flint and pyrite for striking a fire. Her eyes were streaming and she missed Dayna bitterly from the moment her new mare's hooves struck the hard dirt road.

It occurred to her some time later that it was awfully unfair that the Matriarch had sent her away with just the clothes on her back and the bare bones of a travel kit. Why didn't the Matriarch kick out Ysold, and send someone else to fetch a mage from Highjorune? Or at least someone else with her?

Unless they worried the curse was catching, like a winter fever. That would explain the abruptness of it all.

After all, there were plenty of stories about such bad luck rubbing off on others. And if it were bad luck, had she rubbed it on Dayna? Lythe hoped not.

The first night was awful. She realized early on she'd started the wrong way, and had to turn the horse around to head back to Silverkeep and then in the right direction. The mare was cranky at being ridden at night, and kept trying to slow down and nibble at the grasses at the side of the road. Halfway through the night a hard pelting shower came down, and left abruptly, leaving Lythe and her mare sodden. Then a wind started.

Dawn came far too early, and Lythe scrambled about looking for a place to hide from the sun. There was a massive fallen log just off the road, amongst thick trees. Lythe hastily tied the mare to the log, and rolled herself under the log in her wet cloak. She was asleep in minutes.

***

By the time she reached the outskirts of Highjorune, Lythe had grown accustomed to the road but was also thoroughly sick of it. She was damp and hungry. She badly wanted a comb for her hair. She and the mare had formed a truce, but neither liked the other, and to top it off, Lythe now had saddle-sores.

She stayed at an inn outside the city, glad to see company after so many lonely nights. There she saw a tall handsome man with flowing white hair. He was dressed like a dancer's costume, fringes and leaves and beading, but they were worn a bit at the hems and elbows, and patched here and again. They fit him perfectly. Lythe asked the innkeeper who he was at once, mistaking him for a bard; but the innkeeper said, "That's one of the Tayledras out of the Highjorune Vale, he's one of their most powerful sorcerers."

Lythe wasted no time introducing herself to the sorcerer. She had nothing to lose now, and that made her bold with strangers. She curtseyed to him as she had to her own Matriarch, and begged him to take the curse from her.

To her profound relief, he listened to her gravely, and asked her for more details. "So you don't know what it was that cursed you? A spirit-creature, from your lake? I am not the kind of mage who specializes in curses, young one. I am Cometfall k'Jorune, a Healer-Adept. I heal the land, not people." He sighed, and gave her a long, considering look. "But curses are not a normal injury. If you cared to argue magical theory, you could argue they fall in my purview. And there is a business of your lake, of course. Come with me outdoors. We will see if we can break your curse."

First Cometfall made her sit in a circle he made with his power; Lythe felt warm and prickly encased inside it. She felt his awareness pool into her body, knew at once what it was, and just about jumped out of her skin. "Hey!" she cried, "What are you—"

: _ Please, relax _ : Cometfall urged her gently. His voice echoed inside her body. : _ This is uncomfortable at first. Please trust me.: _

She felt him pour through her, sifting through her mind—no, not her mind. He wasn't looking at her memories, he was not prying into her heart. He was touching parts of her that stirred like unused, forgotten limbs. She twitched, abruptly. She hated to be still, when her heart was beating so loudly like a drum.

Cometfall leaned back, reclaiming his awareness and his magic. She could  _ feel _ his power leave her. "Interesting," he said. "Since the Mage-Storms came back, we have seen more curses, more strangeness about Lineas. Some curses are easy to break. Some require tasks be fulfilled. And some… some are difficult cases. Whoever cursed you has woven this curse amongst your magic. I need a sense of your power. Is your art form one that can be practiced here?"

The change of topics made Lythe feel dizzy. Magic? Hers? "Art form?" she repeated, feeling like a child who hadn't been paying attention properly.

"Are you a singer, a player, a musician—"

Oh.

"I'm a dancer," said Lythe. She rose to her feet. It was awkward, she thought abruptly, to just… dance, in front of an old timeless man who wasn't exactly Linean, when there was no music about. But there was her heartbeat, and that was a drum. She was tired and sore and scared, but restless with it, too; out of her restlessness she carved a dance into the nighttime shadows. Here was her pain at her mother's scolding, causing her entire demeanour to slouch; here was the triumph of the firebird dance; and then she stumbled, fell gracelessly to her knees: felled not by a mimed arrow, but rather by a mysterious curse.

"If you were of my people, we would call you 'Shadowdancer' and teach you how to use your magic," said Cometfall, his eyes sparkling in the lantern light.

"What do you mean, my magic?" Lythe asked.

"I see you had no idea you have the gift of mages," Cometfall said. Lythe shook her head. He continued, "It is largely untapped potential, a seedling. It can grow. What you have in abundance, and have instinctive control over, is the art-gift, or what your folk call the Bardic Gift. That one is stronger, I think, than your mage-potential. So, you see: you have two magics. One," he held up his right hand, "is a magic like mine. You can channel your power, and in time, the power of the world around you, to do your bidding. And the other," he held up his left hand, "is the magic you create when you dance. It is channelled by dancing, and it affects the  _ emotions _ of those around you."

"That seems like a lot of magic," said Lythe dubiously.

"There are many gifts, and countless permutations, like the propagation of flowers: a tulip blooms in orange, red, yellow, yellow-orange, and they are not uncommon flowers in the springtime. Many people have small gifts, and hardly use them."

Lythe nodded again. He was using long scholarly words she didn't know, though she could guess at the meaning. Shock made her still and accepting.

"So, your curse: it affects your mage-potential." He bobbed his right hand in the air. "And not your art-gift," he closed his left hand and brought it back down into his lap. "The curse is like a strangling vine twisted around the tree of your mage-potential. It has long thorns all around it, and those thorns point both in, at your magic, and out, at any mage or healer who might seek to remove it. If I attempt to break your curse, Lythe Shadowdancer, I will be badly hurt and you will die."

"Can't you do anything?" Lythe demanded.

"Not and leave you unharmed. The better solution is for you to train your mage-gift, and acquire the power you need to shatter your curse from within. That way no one will be hurt."

"So train me!" cried Lythe.

Cometfall looked away. "We cannot and  _ will not _ take insiders into the Vale," he said. "Especially not when all the magic in the world is in disarray, and the Pelagiris has grown restless and pushes back at us."

"But there aren't that many mages in Lineas!" Lythe cried. "My Matriarch sent me here! There's your people in Highjorune, and where else could I go? Baires is ruled by wicked sorcerers; Valdemar is strange and full of witches; everywhere else is choked off by the Pelagiris!"

Cometfall looked at her mildly. She fell still. "I fear you misunderstand me," he said. "I merely said I could not take you  _ into _ the Vale. I must teach you how to ground, centre, and how to practice on your own so your mage-potential will be under control. And we must find out what is in your lake."

"So you're coming back to Silverkeep with me?"

"Yes," said Cometfall.

***

Cometfall was as good as his word. He was a patient teacher. He kept a firm distance from her, yes, but there was kindness in his attitude. He'd refused payment though she'd offered him all the coin in her purse. And he showed her how to find a calm within herself she never knew she had.

Travelling with Cometfall was much better than travelling alone. She wasn't afraid of daytime, for he would help her search out a shelter, or take her to an inn. He rode a horse whose tack bore the symbol of Highjorune: the drumlin with a wall about. The horse probably belonged to the city. Cometfall sat it comfortably, and taught Lythe better ways to sit on her horse. It made her legs burn at first, but her balance was better, and the mare seemed less peevish by the time they reached Silverkeep.

It was moonrise, and there was a chill wind. The guards at the Keep were startled to see them ride out of the darkness, and more startled still to see who came with Lythe.

The Matriarch saw them both. She sent a guard with Cometfall to the lake, but upon hearing that Lythe was still cursed, she ordered Lythe be taken to the chapel.

There Lythe spent a terrible night.

The priest of Tyreena, Silverkeep's main goddess, lit bowls of incense that poured smoke around her. He bade Lythe recite prayers she'd seldom heard before, and snapped corrections at her when she faltered. He struck her along her clothed back with a willow switch, and though the linen of her dress protected her somewhat, it still hurt! He chanted. He threw herbs all over her. He made her dance for awhile, then spent an hour begging Tyreena to help with artless prayer and not much hope.

By dawn, he bade Lythe go into the sun.

She had no sooner put her hand in a hot yellow beam than the skin began to smoke. Pain flared through her arm. She snatched back her hand, crying out.

The night had been for naught. Tyreena would not, or could not, break Lythe's curse.

She fell back into the shadows, wailing with misery and exhaustion, gripping her burnt red hand. Her wailing brought a maid, who upbraided the priest. Pain consumed her: her smarting hand; her despair knowing she could die in an instant if she were left in the sun; the grief of truly realizing that she would never feel the sun on her face, or see her Dayna's face in the daytime again; or have any semblance of a normal life at all.

The maid plunged her hand in a bucket of cold water. Lythe realized groggily that she'd been taken away from the chapel, back to the Keep proper; they were in the kitchens. The maid said soothing things Lythe did not register. The water was icy. The ice seemed to travel up her arm. It froze her tears in their tracks. People came to to pat her hand dry and slather salve on her burn.

They bundled her in a blanket and let her sleep in the hallway where there were no windows. She lay there sleeping fitfully, waking often despite her exhaustion, because her hand throbbed.

She was vaguely awake to hear the return of Cometfall, explaining in his musical voice to the Matriarch that the Changebeast had been dealt with; that it would not curse anyone again, so long as people were quiet around the lake.

"Can it be killed?"

"I wouldn't advise it," said Cometfall. "It is very powerful."

"You can't make it leave?"

Lythe couldn't hear the rest of the conversation, because sleep took her then.

In the evening, she was startled awake with a rabbit's fear when her mother came shrieking into the Keep, "You can't keep my daughter from me! Where is Lythe? Show me Lythe!"

Lythe scrambled to her feet, the blanket clutched to her chest. She staggered against the wall. Where was everyone? Were there guards? Why was the hallway empty?

The hallway was abruptly flooded by Ysold. She drowned Lythe, embracing her. Lythe sagged. She'd tasted freedom and now it was being taken away from her, and her mother was scolding her for leaving, asserting all the dangers of a world Ysold knew nothing about. Lythe's ears rang with punishment. What could Lythe do now but let Ysold put a cape on her and take her home, where Lythe would live out her nights locked in their little house?

Ysold bundled her, and, barricading her with broad arms, herded her towards the door.

"My pardons, but Lythe is my temporary student, and I must find her a mage-teacher."

Lythe blinked stupidly at Cometfall. He smiled at Ysold, but there was no crinkling of his eerie blue eyes.

"What nonsense is this?" cried Ysold. "This is my child, and she's not  _ yours _ . She's not a-a loose woman, she's my little girl!" She rounded on Lythe next, so close her breath steamed hotly on Lythe's cheek, "What are you doing with this man?" she cried. "What about your reputation? Are you just going to lie with any man who feeds you pretty lies about being his student, like the other whore-girls in the town? Did Dayna teach you that's what girls do?"

Lythe gasped, shocked at this new attack at  _ Dayna _ of all people. To her shame, she saw her vision blur with tears. She muttered, "I didn't  _ sleep _ with him," but it didn't help. Ysold was shrieking, working herself up into a fit. Her arm was so tight around Lythe she thought she'd pass out.

"Now, let's be reasonable," said Cometfall, cutting into Ysold's tirade. Lythe felt something warm and heavy suffuse the room. It made her drowsy.

If Cometfall had tried to use some sort of magic on Ysold, it backfired. Ysold screamed at him, her voice laden with obscenities.

Everything grew very chaotic as Ysold screamed and guards came, and the Matriarch herself needed to tell Ysold off, but it wasn't working. Someone had a bucket of water and passed it to a guard and soaked Ysold with it. The silence after that was shocking in its quietness. Everyone looked at each other, uncertain what to do. Even Cometfall's eyes were wider than Lythe had ever saw them.

And then it all sorted itself out abruptly. Ysold would be locked in a room overnight and then the Matriarch would see her. The guards hauled her away before she'd drawn breath to scream again. Cometfall informed the Matriarch he was taking Lythe away, and the Matriarch nodded grimly.

And just like that Lythe was sitting on her querulous, unhappy mare with Cometfall on his Highjorune horse beside her, and somehow all their things had been packed already. Not that Lythe owned much at all.

They left Silverkeep at a bone-jarring trot, and Lythe clung to the saddle in a haze of misery.  _ Goodbye Silverkeep, who never wanted me; goodbye Mother, who only causes her community grief. _ She should have felt relieved, she thought, to be leaving, to be free. Instead, she mourned the loss of the only home she'd ever had.


	10. The Firebird

_Northern Lineas_   
_86 AF_

The second night since Lythe had been rescued from Silverkeep, a striped owl landed on Cometfall's arm.

Lythe squeaked.

"This is Skwoh," said Cometfall, wearing his mildest expression. There was a twitch at the corner of his mouth. "Skwoh is my… in your language you may say 'Bondbird.'"

"He's enormous," whispered Lythe. She wound her hand in her mare's mane nervously.

"He says you are tiny, for a human adult," Cometfall said.

"I'm not an adult, yet," muttered Lythe. She didn't really want to talk about her nonexistent menses with a mentor that wasn't to be hers. Or his oversized bird. It didn't seem right.

Cometfall continued, perhaps not hearing her, "I've been in correspondence with a mage, through Skwoh, who lives in northern Lineas by a lake my people call Vyus'ker… what's the word in Linean—it doesn't mean the same thing. I've forgotten."

"What's 'Vyushker' mean?" asked Lythe.

"Doesn't translate well," he said. "Like 'brightening the wolf' or perhaps 'shining'… 'a shining wolf'? I didn't name this lake." From his tone, Cometfall would have named it something better. "A Healer-Adept of another clan lived there several generations ago, and made it a very safe place, and now there's a Master mage who I believe you will like, who has agreed to be your teacher. She is a night person, too, although perhaps not as… fully as you are. And you need not fear Changecreatures in the lake."

"What _was_ in the lake, that thing that cursed me?" Lythe asked, although part of her didn't want to know, and another part of her still couldn't get past the big owl preening itself on Cometfall's seemingly-tireless arm. "I know Changecreatures are created by weird magic things in the Pelagiris."

"Yes, you could say that," agreed Cometfall. "There were also the storms, several years ago, when you were small. They created circles on the ground, and magic went mad inside them. Mages that were weak became strong; strong mages lost their magic. People with potential for many powers were ripped open, on the inside, and tormented with magic they didn't know how to control. And many things changed into other things: so a branch might turn into a snake, or a man into a bear."

"I've heard stories about them," Lythe said. "But…"

" _Your_ Changecreature is a serpent that lives in your lake," said Cometfall. "It used to be an Adept-level mage— a human mage—and now it is a cranky serpent. I think, in its own way, it was trying to help you, or at least to punish your mother, but…"

Anger flooded her at once, without her realizing. "What a nasty, Godscursed, meanspirited shitstick!" Lythe burst out. Beneath her, her mare sidled in surprise, then decided Lythe's anger was a good opportunity to start nibbling on a bush. Lythe swore at her horse now, trying to get the mare's head up.

Cometfall lifted his arm and the owl flew noiselessly into the shadows. When Lythe looked at him, his eyes were dancing with amusement. "That is one way to put it," he said.

***

Cometfall did not describe the Master mage to Lythe. "You'll meet her," was all he said. They rode on for a week, and Lythe began to feel whispers of happiness again. She missed the sun, a little, but she could look at the sunlight from the safety of a shadow, and that was almost enough. At dusk she woke to striations of fire colouring the western sky; by the time cool dawn swept the forest in bluish mist, she was ready to find shelter and to sleep, with Cometfall watching over her. By the second week, her night vision had gotten much better than Cometfall's. She learned that he could use Skwoh's eyes when the night was dark.

Cometfall did not hurry her along the road, though she learned from his ready stories that the Tayledras were an insular people, even those of the k'Jorune Vale, who were seldom away from their Vales for long.

"We, of all people, should know that change means adaptation," he told her one evening, as they crossed a stream. Lythe's mare had shied at the stream, refusing to cross; Lythe perforce had to dismount and lead her. She and the mare had built up just enough trust that the mare, snorting with immense displeasure, minced fearfully across the water. It was not even ankle-deep.

"What do you mean?" Lythe asked.

"Every generation bears a new trouble," he explained, settling back on his Highjorune horse. It waited for the mare, whickering at her, as if to encourage her. Cometfall continued, "Our trouble has been a rash of curses and misfortunes across Lineas. Many young people, such as yourself, have been cursed or had their entire life twisted by Changemagic. Often, it seems, an adult who forgets that youth means that a person is not yet wise, now has the power to chastise. You're wondering why I am spending time escorting you myself. The answer is threefold: I want to see my mage friend again; I find time away from k'Jorune to be useful for gaining perspective—both city and Vale have their own petty intrigues—and finally, because I didn't do all I could to help the cursed ones who came to me in the past."

"Oh," said Lythe. Cometfall had introduced a lot of ideas all at once to her. She took her time sorting out what he'd said. As she sifted her thoughts beneath the jewelled stars, she realized all at once that she loved Cometfall. She loved him like the father she'd never known: he was clear with her, and did not patronize. He didn't praise her one moment only to send her crashing down the next. He was everything Ysold was not. "So," she said after awhile, "You're worried you're actually like the ones who curse others, because… you didn't help the youths that came to you before?"

Cometfall said, "Mmm." He was looking off beyond his horse's ears, into the woods.

"But you didn't do anything! The lake creature actively cursed me!"

Cometfall tilted his head, regarding her. "Inaction still has the potential to harm," he said. "It is a choice that should be made no more lightly than any other." He let Lythe work on that one, too.

Some time later they came on a waterfall, about twice Cometfall's height, running like molten stars into the earth. The road went along the riverbank. "This is the Varath River, a tributary of the Jorune," Cometfall said loudly over the waterfall's roar, "At the end of this, we will find the lake and your new teacher."

And then Lythe would have to say goodbye to Cometfall. She didn't want to think about that. The breeze flung waterfall spray into her eyes, and she shuddered with cold and nerves.

Then sparks flashed across the water, above and below, reflecting wildly off the flowing water. Sensing Lythe's attention was elsewhere, the mare stopped abruptly and began to graze at the columbine and marsh marigolds growing on the bank. Lythe let her. Sparks were shooting up soundlessly across the river, brighter than a normal fire, red and blue and green and gold.

"What is that?" Lythe cried.

She could hear the smile in Cometfall's voice. "A firebird display!" he called back.

A firebird? A real, live firebird? On a main road? Lythe laughed in delight, bouncing in her saddle from excitement.

The firebird soared against the stars, multi-hued fire streaming from its feathers. It flew like a dance, tracing spinning spirals into the night air, and Lythe realized just what a poor imitation her own dance had been. Her arms were gliding into the air, made buoyant by beauty, tracing the flight of the firebird.

It cried out several times, in an alien fluting voice, and then followed with a clacking, deeper, cajoling sound, _kakatkatkacht!_ It was like no birdsong Lythe had heard before, inelegant, but endearing. The bird shrieked or whooped. There was fire blazing all around, flamelets dripping to the ground. Leaves burnt up in the firebird's wake, their veins traced orange, but no fire caught hold of the forest: the world was too wet. So the fire splashed like the waterfall, harmless and beautiful.

Lythe's eyes were streaming when it was over.

"They are dangerous, you know," said Cometfall after the sky had been dark for many breaths. "They can burn you. Until you learn to use your magic to protect yourself, you'll need to avoid them."

"Can I avoid them and still watch them?" asked Lythe. "Will I be able to see firebirds more?"

"If they're breeding around here, almost certainly. They only perform mating displays in the spring, you know. When it's wet. But they are beautiful even when they are not on fire."

They reached the lake by early dawn. The sun was invisible behind the thick trees that surrounded the lake; the sky bluish-grey. Loons called across the water. There were little islands studding the lake, none big enough for a building. The lake itself was big enough that the far side was misty and indistinct; but small enough that nearly all its edges were visible in a glance. The school lay to the left side, on a rougher road that was springy with grass.

As they drew near the school, the shape of it emerged: a round tower of stone, a full three stories high, with a conical thatched roof. Vines draped around the sides of it. There were neat gardens all around, a chicken coop, a small stable. There were two shaggy ponies in a lean-to, and a mule in the yard.

Lythe loved it immediately. This was just as well, because Tephla's Tower would be her new home for the next three years.


	11. Tephla's Tower

Three years later    
_ Tephla's Tower  _   
_ 89 AF _

The ride to Adept Tephla's school was a pleasing one. The sound of the waterfall relaxed Rothas, as if its roar were a massage. The Varath river coiled downhill where it emptied into a lake, and Rothas could already see the lake's silvery sheen through the trees if he stood up in his stirrups.

"Nearly there," he assured Protector, who was snorting and sidling impatiently along the road. Protector was a buckskin stallion Rothas had caught in western Lineas, in a bachelor herd along the banks of Lake Evendim, and he was not fully tamed. Rothas thought he might never be tamed, and he liked that about Protector. It made for challenging riding, especially now that it was spring. Protector had eyed up every mare along the path, from Rothas's former mage school near Evendim all the way here in the northern part of Lineas. Rothas could sympathize with Protector's instincts, even if he couldn't relate.

Rothas whistled jauntily as Protector trotted down the path, matching the whistle's tune to the tempo of hooves. It was a good day to be alive, sunny and warm with a nice snapping breeze. "A river, a quiver, and a package to deliver," he sang. "Going all a-northwards, hey nonny no!"

Protector's ears swivelled to catch syllables; Rothas could feel the great golden body below him easing even as the tireless trot continued. There wasn't any magic to it, beyond what music did normally: Protector just liked to hear Rothas sing.

It was high afternoon by the time they reached the road to the school, past the drunken board haphazardly hung on a tree branch with a misshapen arrow pointing inwards to the lake. The conical tower was charming. A newly-built stable was surrounded by a field of uncleared stumps, where several horses and a mule were grazing. A little child in a bright red tunic jumped up from their perch on another stump closer to the door. They had a basket of wool they were carding, though there wasn't a sheep to be seen.

"Hullo there!" Rothas called. He dismounted Protector and led the horse the rest of the way near the dirt-smudged child. The child looked to be about nine or ten. "I've brought a message for Adept Tephla. I think she'll be expecting me."

"I guess," the child said suspiciously, "you're Rothas? You don't look like a messenger. You look like a hero!"

Rothas snorted. "Can't I be both?" he asked, then added, "Though I'm not a hero, I'm a journeyman mage."

"That's all right then," the child said. They leaped over to where Rothas was and grabbed for Protector's reins. "You go in and find Tephla and I'll take your horse!"

Unfortunately Rothas has not expected this burst of speed nor for the child to yank at the reins; Protector had expected this less. Protector chose that moment to decide that he did not like children, and he yanked his head up in the air, ripping the reins clean out of both Rothas's and the child's grip, spun about, and lept the fence into the stumpy pasture.

He did not quite clear the fence. His back hooves smashed into the wood, and the entire section splintered, buckled, and collapsed.

"By Horneth's hairy balls, child!" Rothas yelped. "That was dangerous. Oh hells. Oh no. NO!"

"Oops," said the child.

Protector smelled mare. He squealed and arched his neck. He flung up his feet and bounced up to the other horses in the pasture. Rothas jumped over the fence to catch him. Three of the four horses were gelded and Protector had ignored them. The geldings backed off in one fluid motion, a rush of brownish-red bodies who wanted nothing to do with this upstart newcomer.

That left the mare.She watched the stallion prance and yell about his prowess in blustery horse-talk. Rothas was running for Protector, but the mare was backing up fast despite her round frame, and Protector was dancing all around her, his mane and tail rippling like black banners, his striped golden back surging like a wave. The mare's ears twitched back, and further back, and back and down. Rothas swore to himself, and made a lunge for Protector's reins.

No good. Protector wasn't having any of it. He plunged farther away. The mare snapped at him.

Protector, who had lived in a bachelor herd with no mares to teach him manners, let his lengthening penis drive his decision making. He rose up to cover her.

The mare spun about and kicked him full in the chest. In moments, she was on the other side of the pasture, squealing and snorting with derision.

It was a very abashed Protector that Rothas led out of the pasture. His head hung low, his penis retracted, his hooves barely lifted. "At least you know when you've been beaten," Rothas said over his own maddened heartbeat. He'd investigated the kick-site, but it looked like it hadn't been a very hard blow. There was no bleeding, and Protector looked more embarrassed than injured. Still, he hoped Tephla knew a nearby horse-leech.

A small crowd had gathered around the front of the tower, about four stripling youths, an older woman with flour on her apron, and a tall plump woman of middle-age with severe silver hair and deep laugh-lines around her eyes. The red-clad child who'd caused the havoc was the youngest, and they hung back, as ashamed as Protector.

Rothas kept a tight hand on Protector's reins while he bowed to the assembled mage school and said, "My apologies to you, Adept Tephla." At the middle-aged woman's nod, he continued, "My horse is newly caught and I should have been more vigilant. I've brought you a package of letters from Westwater School. My name is Rothas Sunsinger."

"Greetings and well met. I see Soras helped make trouble again," Tephla jabbed her fingers at the red-clad child, who cringed before her tempestuous expression. "I'll send for a horse-leech, and I suspect that mare of Lythe's is fine as usual. And you, you're a mage aren't you? Not too skilled, to let your horse run rampant. You'll spend the day mending that fence with Soras's help."

Rothas wanted to argue, but the fence was broken, and it was Protector's fault. "Yes, Adept," he said. Some of the students were giggling—as was the older woman with the floury apron—and some were wide-eyed. "Which of you is Lythe?" he asked. "I'd like to apologize directly."

"Lythe's asleep, it's daytime," said a young teenager, as if it was normal for a person to be asleep in the middle of the day, and really, oughn't Rothas know better?

"Oh," said Rothas. "I'll apologize to Lythe later."

He spent a much less enjoyable afternoon rebuilding the fence, with Soras's dubious help. (Protector they locked into a stall in the stable.) Soras turned out to be an orphan boy of middling mage potential, and every bit as chattery and unhelpful as Rothas had feared. The floury older woman was Mariel, the cook, and she came out with bread and cheese and tea, and gossiped about the local area for awhile. There was a small village nearby, which had pastures with sheep on them. Mariel seemed happy to look at Rothas labouring shirtless in the sun, which made him uncomfortable though he could tell she wasn't actually interested.

There were too many damned women at this school, he thought miserably to himself as he hammered a board. No young men, no older men, and he'd been hoping to stay and learn! Tephla, they'd said at Westwater, knew quite a lot about curses.

The afternoon rolled into evening. Rothas took tea with Tephla and Mariel. Soras hung onto Rothas out of some blend of hero-worship and camaraderie, and made himself a servant: fetching jam and tea and a warm bun from the oven and was there anything else Rothas needed? When there wasn't, Tephla and Mariel in one voice banished him from the room.

The messages Rothas delivered had been about magical theory, along with several letters from Matriarchs with local news, and a packet of letters full of gossip and personal stories—correspondence from students, peers and friends. "You are blessed by Tyreena and Horneth, you are," Tephla said, digging through the letters with glee. They sat in comfortable chairs around the hearth in the kitchen. "This will keep me occupied! Oh, is that from Bellna? I've missed her… and Hartran finished his Masterwork already?! Goodness, I couldn't be prouder." She flipped through the packet at a dizzying pace, then set them aside with a contented sigh. "Rothas, you're a journeyman now, aren't you?" She lay down the packets on her lap.

Rothas nodded. "In both magery and the Bardic arts."

Mariel said, "Roof needs a rethatch this year. And we usually go without much meat, so a hunter would be useful to have around."

Tephla nodded and gave Rothas a considering glance. "If you stay on longer than the summer, you could give the children musical instruction, couldn't you? That would round out their education nicely. We have had no bards passing through of late."

Rothas almost wanted to say no. He had vague thoughts of fighting monstrous Pelagiris beasts and meeting dashing young men with honest hearts whom he could charm with a song. But he knew enough about life now to know that really, monsters are uncommon, and dashing young men usually preferred women. Tephla taught a different school of magic than Westwater, which meant he would be doing what a journeyman ought to do: learn from different schools. The lake was beautiful and the land half-wild. The jam was excellent. Perhaps his Bardic spirit wasn't thrilled with Tephla's homey school, but there were definite advantages to staying on.

And maybe a dashing young man would turn up in the woods. One never knew.

"I'll help you rethatch your roof," Rothas agreed. "We'll see how it goes from there. Although, I should warn you that I'm under a curse."

Tephla sat her ceramic mug down with a clink on the brick in front of the hearth. "Are you really?" Tephla asked. And then when he outlined its nature, she said, "A daytime curse? Isn't that the funniest thing!"

Rothas felt a jab of hurt in his gut. He regretted agreeing to thatch the roof. "How is that funny?" he asked, unable to keep the sharpness from his voice.

"Oh, my dear," Tephla said, and patted his knee. "I'm not meaning to mock you! It's just that our Lythe has a very similar curse, except that it's a bit more dangerous. She burns up in the sunlight, so she can only be out at night."

"A similar curse? By a sorceress who changes shape?" Rothas asked, leaning forward. His worries vanished, replaced by eagerness. He asked about the sorceress everywhere he went, hoping to find her and force her to remove the curse. The Tayledras had been of the opinion she couldn't, but Rothas had found a history of curses at the Westwater School that suggested a mage who cursed could be reasoned with to remove their curse. It was worth a chance, after all. Rothas still didn't have the power he needed to break the curse himself.

Tephla broke his hopes instantly. "No," she said, "she was cursed by a Pelagiris monster, not a sorceress."

"Oh."

"Curses are hard things," Tephla said. "I've studied Lythe's for three years now, since she came to us, but the shape of it is knotted around her magic so tightly that an improper spell could kill her."

"That's about what the Tayledras of k'Jorune told me about my curse," said Rothas.

"If any mage had the knowledge to remove a curse, it should be the Tayledras," said Tephla, "for their finesse with the powers of this world is unmatched. I have tried to contact denizens of other planes, and so has Lythe, but even extraplanar mages were baffled. These new-fangled curses are impossible!" She sighed. "I miss the days of my youth, when you could easily turn a curse back. They were silly things, like spitting frogs every time you spoke."

"I suppose I'll never be able to apologize to Lythe about the mare," said Rothas.

"You might," said Tephla, "She can be found awake in the day. I wouldn't worry about it. Lythe's mare has a nasty temper and can take care of herself. Your stallion—the horse-leech could geld him, if—"

"No," said Rothas. "I like him as he is. I'll just work on his training. He's seen mares before. We can make this work."

Tephla shrugged. "I know very little of horses," she admitted. "When I ride, I ride the mule."

Tephla gave Rothas a bedroll in the room Soras used, which was really more a storeroom. There Rothas put his leather case of musical instruments—his panpipes, two ceramic rattles, and chief amongst them his lyre—and threatened Soras with flaying, boiling in oil, or a dunk in the lake should he ever, ever touch them without permission. Naturally, Soras agreed.

The following evening, Rothas met Lythe. He was coming into the tower after feeding Protector. A creaking of stairs made him look up.

It was only because the stairs were old that they creaked; she seemed to pour down the stairs like water. Her skin was dusky and dark like the underside of a leaf; her thick blue-black hair swayed behind her like a veil. She dressed simply in the long tunic and hose that country women wore to work in. It was only when she came to the bottom of the stairs, and looked up at him in startlement with green-yellow eyes, that he realized she was in truth human, and also so short that she only reached his shoulder.

Time felt sticky and mellow and slow around him.

He shook his head to clear the weirdness away. "Are you Lythe?" he asked.

"I am," she said. Her voice was deeper than he expected, throaty.

"I'm sorry about my horse," he said in a rush. "He got away from me—your mare is safe but I should never have let him get that far."

"You must be Rothas, then," she said, and looked him up and down boldly. He almost flinched—please, he thought, don't find me attractive. "I don't mind about my mare."

"Oh," said Rothas. "Good."

Before he'd even had a chance to blink, she'd sidestepped around him with a cheerful, "Good night!" and vanished into the shadowy darkness outside.

Just as well they had opposite curses, thought Rothas. It would be just like a girl that age to fall in love with him. It'd be annoying. He was lucky that he could carefully avoid her until next spring, when he'd be off journeying once again.


	12. Meetings

Tephla's Tower  
89 AF

It was the very first night of summer. That meant it was short, and Lythe wouldn't have very long to look for pigmented clays along the lakeside. She could hear the sounds of Midsummer partying around the school. Rothas had taught Mariel and the students how to make their own ceramic rattles, and a steady joyful rhythm throbbed all around the tower, praising the Gods and the spirits of the world, and inviting with friendship denizens of other planes; the veil between worlds was thin. No actual summoning magic would occur at such a festivity, of course: these were rituals regular folk used to celebrate the unseen and appease potential foes.

It was all a bit noisy for Lythe. Last year she danced eagerly, seeking to dazzle—she'd danced her Bardic gifts into everyone at the tower, and enchanted them utterly. This year, Lythe kept to herself.

At first, Lythe had been so pleased with Tephla and her tower. Tephla became a real mother to her, as her own could never be: for the first time, a real teacher showed Lythe how to do even basic tasks, sewing or cleaning in addition to magework, and did not scold her. Lythe learned to make errors and grow from them. Mariel became like a grandmother, teaching her the womanly arts of baking, cookery, brewing, and preservation, on her wondrous cookware made not only of ceramic, but of the heavy, rare metal known as iron. The women taught Lythe how to manage her newly-come menses, with herbs and meditative breathing and kindness. Tephla and Lythe had long discussions in Tephla's study at the top of the tower, drinking tea by the mugful and delving deep into the wounds Lythe carried with her from Silverkeep.

At first Lythe was hesitant to take risks, but over the three years she learned to silence the phantom-voice of her mother. Now she ranged as far beyond the tower as night allowed. She knew the skies like a familiar tale or a familiar dance; she could read the stars and the patterns of clouds as easily as Tephla could read a book. She found herself pulling away from the domesticity of tower life.

Only yesterday Tephla had said to her, "I think it's that you've the makings of a Matriarch. You're like the Bee-Queen who must be thrust from her hive to make a new home. You haven't lost the lineage of your foremothers; you are simply carrying it onwards. Birthing a new home. That's why you're restless."

Lythe had screwed up her nose. "I don't want a village," she tried to explain, "I want to see the world when I'm a journeyman!"

Tephla nodded enthusiastically. "Then you can journey out to find yourself a place to start a village or a school! That's what I did when I was about your age, you know."

Tephla was sweet, she really was, Lythe reflected as the sounds of merriment faded behind her, replaced by the lapping of waves and the calling of loons. Tephla was just a very traditional Linean woman, and a Matriarch in her own right. In Tephla's world, women were either the central leader of a group, or subordinate. It wasn't flexible. Women shouldn't travel, Tephla would say. Women are meant to seep their thick roots into the ground, and become like a tree under whose branches others come for shelter.

Lythe didn't want shelter. Even though every day brought the danger of death, she longed for travel. She was already a prisoner in her own body, held back from the day by her curse. Must she be Tephla's prisoner, too?

She added clay to her shallow, tray-like basket, big dollops of differing kinds. She could see in the night almost as if it were day, except that the colours were duller. Colour, she learned, was made of light. And light was often heat; and magic often produced both; which meant that both light and heat were a form of magical energy. Part of her sight wasn't really sight at all: she used magic to trace the dancing of the light-energy upon objects, to help her differentiate the colours. She could see the world by feeling the way it danced.

It was easier to dance the world's dance when she was alone, and she floated through the forest like she was a breeze, barely disturbing the ground at all, except when she bent to pick up a heap of clay in her dirty hands.

Her basket full, she turned around and headed back for the treeline.

The dancing of the world changed abruptly. A song, fluting and elegant, seemed to shudder through the moonlight; but there was no song, it was just an intuition.

There was a man coming out of the shadows, his hair so golden the moonlight couldn't hide it.

"Good eve, Lythe," he said.

Her heart seemed to rattle in her chest, like the ceramic rattles back at the tower, but frenzied. She felt the world sing another chord, felt things twist about in her gut. She didn't need the complications of this man in her life!

Then she shook herself, confused. What complication? He was only here for the summer, teaching music, learning magic, and rethatching the roof. That's all. They'd spoken before, once. He'd apologized about his horse, his pretty horse that was as golden as he was.

"Good eve," she said blandly.

"I hadn't realized you were here," he said, his tone apologetic—but he didn't sound precisely like he was apologizing to her. In fact, to her consternation, he was looking everywhere but at her.

"Were you expecting someone else?" she asked crossly. "Aren't the other girls here a bit young for you?"

"Wha—what?"

Lythe rolled her eyes. "It's Midsummer, and you're wandering the woods like you expected to meet someone. Most of Tephla's students aren't old enough for canoodling."

"I don't like women," Rothas snarled. Then he brought himself up like a spooked horse. Now he was staring at her, sky-bright eyes wide with horror. "Not—I mean, I like them well enough as people."

Lythe didn't know what to say to that. What did he mean? That he didn't like women? Maybe simply that he had no interest in romance? She ignored a faint whisper of disappointment.

Eventually she said, trying to break the horrible silence, "Then why were you out here? Shouldn't you be rattling at the unseen world with the others?"

"I just woke up," he explained. "I wanted some quiet. I was going to wash my face in the lake."

"You just woke—oh, Tyreena's ass!" Lythe cried in dismay. She looked up to the east, where the sky was turning a glorious blue. "I need to get back!"

She fled for the tower, hoping to outrun the sun. The shadows held her safe, thank goodness, until she reached Tephla's tower.

***

She saw Rothas infrequently, but regularly, though they rarely spoke except to nod a greeting or wave—with the awkwardness of strangers who knew they should be on familiar terms, but were not.

The rethatch presented a thorned logistical problem, because first a scaffolding needed to be rigged, water reeds needed to be gathered in great abundance, and everyone at Tephla's school needed to learn how roofs worked. Tephla seized on this as a great way of explaining how you can lay an enchantment into a roof. This was theoretical for Tephla: though she spent days talking about earthwitchery, she couldn't perform any of it, being an Adept. Rothas, it seemed, was perfectly capable of thatching a roof and had done so before, and he organized everyone in a Matriarch's fashion.

He caught Lythe before sunset and asked her to collect reeds, showing her what she needed for an appropriate roof-reed. She went out to the lake and piled reeds on the back of her contrary mare, and spent a frustrating night convincing the mare that no, water reeds were not for nibbling. In the end, the mare decided she didn't care about Lythe, and Lythe had taken to swatting her nose whenever she reached for the reeds.

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself," Lythe said.

The mare huffed in response.

Rothas had come out to see her unloading heaps of reeds onto the lawn before the tower, on the other side from the pasture. It being a hot day already despite the cloud cover, Rothas wore only his white linen undertunic. He stretched mightily in the morning air, his arms rippling, the shape of his chest muscles easy to guess at beneath the cloth. His arms and legs were covered with a faint golden fuzz. Lythe swallowed, confused, and looked away. She'd wanted to touch him, and she didn't know why.

Rothas was pleased with her reed-collection, and Lythe was promptly annoyed at herself for enjoying how warm she felt when he thanked her.

"Would you like to see how to bundle them?" he asked, coming closer.

"Of course," she said.

"Right, good! So we'll need about ten thousand bundles," he said with a laugh, gesturing up at the tall conical roof. A slim latticework of ladder was already built. "First you get your twine. See, I brought this massive ball, it's as big as my head!" He pulled out a long length of twine and cut it with his knife. "About this long. Then you'll take this much reed, pack them even as you can make them onto the twine, and then just tie it up. Simple. I'll bring over your sunshade, too, so you don't have to go to sleep yet. Must be hard in the summer, nights being short."

"It is. I'm not sleepy at all yet," Lythe agreed.

She reached over for the bundle. Rothas handed it over, his hand slipping over hers. 

Warmth turned to heat.

Pain seared into Lythe's hands. She dropped the bundle, screaming. A thin wisp of smoke floated from her sizzling hands; the air smelled of burnt flesh. She pulled her hands tight to her chest, but that made them hurt worse. Tears oozed into her eyes. She swore violently.

Rothas had jumped about a foot away. "What?—Are you all right? Lythe? Lythe!"

"You burned me," she said, letting her hands fall open. "I didn't mean to make a fuss."

Angry red burn marks and rapid blistering showed where Rothas had touched her. He stared at her in bewilderment.

She smiled tremulously. "It's you," she said. "You could kill me with a touch. You're the sun."


End file.
